Into the Florida Wilderness

by Fiori Perdichizzi (Illustrator), Elizabeth Perdichizzi

Overview

Non-Fiction: The book is based on fascinating first-hand accounts of life on the edge of civilization before Florida became a tourist and snowbird haven. The story is told in first person through the lively written diaries, photographs, and letters of three growing daughters of homeopathic doctors Mary and Louis Olds who lived on Marco Island from 1903 to 1920. Dr. Mary's challenge was to create a cultured home and educate her daughters in a place without roads, electricity, sewage, running water, hospitals, churches, or grocery stores. How do you preserve food without refrigeration?
Wealthy and socially prominent northerners were attracted to their modest two-story home on the Marco River, becoming friends and sharing beach picnics and family suppers. The girls took pictures with their camera and developed the film themselves…when they had ice! Names like Pinchot, Hornaday, Fielding, Dimock and Halderman float through the narratives like next-door neighbors.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940149043583
Publisher:	Caxambas Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	277
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Perdichizzi has a passion to capture and share the history of the southwest Florida region because she has the keen sense that time is running out since those who know the island lore are dying off or drifting away. She has written and published a total of four non-fiction historical books, “Into the Florida Wilderness, A journey with Doctors Mary and Louis Olds, “The Phony Hermit” 2010, “Island Voices, They Came to Marco Island” 2006, “A Girl Called Tommie, Queen of Marco Island” 1999, as well as “Into the Wilderness” published in 2013.
A freelance columnist for the Marco Island Sun Times, Perdichizzi used her column “Days Gone By”, (2003 – 2011), to promote education, appreciation, and understanding of the unique history and heritage of the Marco Island Community, and its place in Southwest Florida. Perdichizzi earned the “Florida Golden Quill Award in 2004”, a journalism award given by the Florida Historical Society for excellence in writing about Florida’s history.
She has written and performed historical interpretations of island pioneers and SW Florida personalities. Perdichizzi’s adaptations in 1998 inspired the creation of the Marco Island Historical Re-enactors, a group she presently leads. In 2011 her multi-media play, “The Florida Land Barons of the Golden Age,” inspired by Charles Harner's out-of-print book "Florida Promoters, Men Who Made it Big," was presented at Rose History Auditorium at the Marco Island Historical Museum. The original version premiered in 2004, before audiences in Collier and Lee Counties.