The Cypress Girl

Book One of the Okeela Grove Series

1858: In the Florida Everglades, land is stolen as quickly as hearts.

Ellie Cypress has grown up in the glades, her journal brimming with plants, birds, and dangerous truths of who really owns the land she loves. Her father and brother are missing. Fires sweep through homesteads, driving families to flee. Wealthy men speak of “progress” while scheming to seize her family’s property—by marriage, misappropriation, or murder.

Her mother fends off greedy suitors. Her Seminole grandmother presses her to grow up. And Ellie wrestles with her own restless heart, torn between the neighbor boy she has always loved and a newcomer whose questions cut too close. Desire and distrust entwine, leaving her caught between the safety of yearning and the peril of being truly seen.

The more Ellie observes what others overlook, the more she uncovers threads of her family’s disappearance and the truths men would kill to keep buried. What she writes in her journal becomes more than memory—it becomes the spark of resistance, because sometimes fire is what it takes for seeds to grow.

Lush, atmospheric, and urgent, The Cypress Girl is a tale of first love, hidden histories, and a girl who finds her voice when the world tries to silence her.