"'There is no more Punta Rassa as you knew it,' Toby Cypress said, his eyes reflecting sadness. 'It is all gone, Sol, just as Lake Okeechobee as we once knew it is gone, and the custard-apple forest is gone, and the balk cypress trees are gone. You are trying to capture the fog, and no one can do that,'" Chapter 1, p. 6.

"Tobias MacIvey was thirty years old and had been in the Florida scrub for five years. He had come south out of Georgia in 1858. In his horse-drawn wagon there was a sack of corn and a sack of sweet potatoes, a few packets of seeds, a shotgun and a few shells, a frying pan, several pewter dishes and forks, and a cast-iron pot. There were also the tools he would need to clear the land and build a house: two chopping axes, a broadaxe foot...