Cold Before Morning: A Heart-Warming Novel About a Florida Pioneer Family

Cold Before Morning: A Heart-Warming Novel About a Florida Pioneer Family by Jones, John Paul, Jr.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780942407181.

Cold Before Morning is a simple yet powerful novel of a Scottish familys emotional and heart-warming romance and daily conflict with pioneer Florida between 1854 and 1913. The James McCredies arrived in Micanopy, Florida, one of the states oldest communities, just in time to get involved in the Third Seminole Indian War, then the Civil War, followed by years of Reconstruction and Yellow Fever epidemics. During those same years, North-Central Florida experienced the "Orange Fever" that drove men to acquire large acreage of citrus trees as they sought to build empires with Victorian homes and extensive bank accounts from their trees of "yellow gold." The title, Cold Before Morning, symbolizes the heartaches, the murders, the thievery, the mysteries, the accidents that took men before their time, and the diseases that caused family tragedies that only the strong could endure. The story also portrays the happiness of courtship, the fulfillment of marriage, and the building of strong families in the face of these hardships. The McCredie family was a real family, the principals of which are all dead, buried in cemeteries in Micanopy, Ocala, Rochelle and Gainesville. This is their story, told by James McCredies grandson.