Seminole Wars: Essays of American Florida, 2008-2017

When you look closely, with intention, you really can't miss America's ongoing Seminole wars. We've always hidden them in plain sight, wherever our loose definitions of race and caste and enemy and power shape each other. For most of his life, author Billy Townsend did not look very closely. Doing so, finally, proved a shattering experience, in an upper middle-class white man's kind of way. Looking closer through a series of essays took Townsend to dark and beautiful places. It showed him how American sex and race and power and violence define each other across generations. Together they make American history, American races, and American characters. Florida teems with them. So Townsend's essays do, too. In the past nine years, Townsend has learned much about his country and himself he cannot now unlearn. These essays document that process. And they invite you to join in the looking.