1513: Ponce de Leon Discovers Florida

One hundred years before the English arrived at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, the handsome Spanish adventurer Juan Ponce de Leon discovered and named Florida, land of flowers. This is the gripping story of his life from a noble, but driven, Spanish page until his death by a Calusa Indian arrow on a Florida beach near the author’s Gulf Coast home in Fort Myers.

The year 2013 marks the five hundred year anniversary of the discovery and naming of Florida by this Spanish conquistador. The reader follows the rapid paced life of the adventurer through the eyes of his best friend written years after Ponce’s death.

This is not a stuffy, lifeless, history book written by a college professor. The readers are with the young men and can smell the musty castle where they were pages and squires together, and they will travel with them through battles in both Spain and the New World, and through ship destroying hurricanes. The readers are with Ponce as he becomes the first Governor of Puerto Rico and later of Florida, and as he searches for the Fountain of Youth at the request of his aging King Ferdinand of Spain.

There are special historical notes provided at the end of each chapter.

This novel is a companion to Mr. Haines’ earlier novel For God, Gold, and Glory about De Soto’s journey into the heart of La Florida, and it is part of his planned Florida Trilogy.