The Author's Blog
Louis Berry Writes
First chapters of every novel, weekly installments of The Everglades, and reflections from the author's desk.
The Everglades — Weekly Chapters
The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-Six
1983. On the Miccosukee reservation, a wise old tribal chairman takes a brash young Phillip Billie aside and counsels him to choose a mate for her soul, not her flesh — as drug money and materialism erode the old ways...
Read Chapter Twenty-Six →
The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-Five
Miami, 1981. Ynez learns the truth about the family she defends — that they control the courts and answer to no one — and her faith begins to turn from idealism toward something harder: retribution...
Read Chapter Twenty-Five →
The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-Four
Miami, 1981. The idealistic young attorney Ynez Figueroa is pressured by her powerful firm to defend a trafficker — and finds herself drawn toward the very corruption she swore she would resist...
Read Chapter Twenty-Four →The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three follows the novel's damage into its next generation — the wounds a broken family passes to a lost teenage boy. Out of care for readers, it is not reproduced on the blog, but remains part of the complete novel...
Read the note →
The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-Two
Miami, 1980. A charismatic young banker is murdered by corrupt police, and the shadow-network stokes the division that sets a city ablaze — a chapter drawn from the real history that scarred a city...
Read Chapter Twenty-Two →The Everglades — Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One descends into the most malignant face of the novel's evil — the machinery of corruption and blackmail. Out of care for readers, it is not reproduced on the blog, but remains an essential part of the complete novel...
Read the note →
The Everglades — Chapter Twenty
1977. At a bayfront estate celebrating Ynez Figueroa's graduation, her father and eldest brother reveal the true nature of the family business, the shadowed powers above it, and a moral failure that has haunted the old man for twenty years...
Read Chapter Twenty →
The Everglades — Chapter Nineteen
Summer 1973. A fishing trip at Hammock Lake becomes a quiet study in cruelty — a neglected boy, a favored brother, a grandfather's contempt — and the stubborn light in a child who still believes there must be more to life than this...
Read Chapter Nineteen →
The Everglades — Chapter Eighteen
August 1971. Nixon closes the gold window, de Gaulle's warships steam into New York Harbor demanding France's gold, and a Swiss banker arrives in Miami to fold the Everglades cell into a new, centralized order that plans four generations ahead...
Read Chapter Eighteen →
The Everglades — Chapter Seventeen
July 21, 1971 — Phillip Billie's sixth birthday. A grand party staged by a mother who cannot grow past the age of six herself, and a quiet portrait of the neglect and divided heritage shaping the youngest son of a broken family...
Read Chapter Seventeen →The Everglades — Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen follows the next generation into the long shadow of the novel's evil — the wounds passed from the abused to the children who inherit them. Out of care for readers, it is not reproduced on the blog, but remains part of the complete novel...
Read the note →The Everglades — Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen confronts the darkest face of the evil at the heart of the novel. Out of care for readers, it is not reproduced on the blog — but remains an essential part of the story, available in the complete novel...
Read the note →
The Everglades — Chapter Fourteen
1959. Miccosukee Chief Buffalo Tiger watches developers and corrupt politicians strangle his people's land — and, inspired by one man who once stood against a coup, looks abroad for an unlikely ally in the fight for sovereignty...
Read Chapter Fourteen →
The Everglades — Chapter Thirteen
April 1957. Twelve years after coming ashore, the conspirators install their own man as Mayor of Miami — and a scientist from Operation Paperclip lays out the full, decades-long plan to turn a free people against itself...
Read Chapter Thirteen →
The Everglades — Chapter Twelve
September 22, 1955. Colonel Von Unterscheisse drives north to the Chattahoochee state hospital, where a single trusted nurse becomes the Nazis' newest instrument for destabilizing society from within...
Read Chapter Twelve →
The Everglades — Chapter Eleven
September 20, 1955. As Hurricane Ione threatens Miami, a military coup in Argentina topples Peron — sending shockwaves through the Nazi network and leaving Hochstühl and Von Unterscheisse suddenly rudderless...
Read Chapter Eleven →
The Everglades — Chapter Ten
1954. Major Vetter arrives at the Miami warehouse — a ghost from Berlin bearing chilling news. The Nazi plan now has a medical component, and the American population is the target...
Read Chapter Ten →
The Everglades — Chapter Nine
1951. Both Hochstühl and Von Unterscheisse took American brides. It was part of the plan — but a journey to Buenos Aires and a scientist the world hoped to forget would change everything...
Read Chapter Nine →
The Everglades — Chapter Eight
1949. The Copa City Nightclub — Hochstühl and Von Unterscheisse attend a show by Desi Arnaz, seething at the joy and multiculturalism they are determined to destroy...
Read Chapter Eight →
The Everglades — Chapter Seven
1949. Johnson Billie makes his final stand against the Nazis in a desperate bid to rescue children from the underground tunnel beneath the Miami warehouse...
Read Chapter Seven →
The Everglades — Chapter Six
December 14, 1947. At the Biscayne Bay marina, the Nazis recruit Harry Northrup — planting seeds of corruption that will echo across generations...
Read Chapter Six →
The Everglades — Chapter Five
January 1947. Nazi sleeper cells have been given a deadline — and the General unveils a sinister new plan involving Miami's waterfront development...
Read Chapter Five →
The Everglades — Chapter Four
December 1945. Johnson Billie searches for his missing brother and discovers a hidden tunnel beneath the Nazi warehouse — and something far worse than drugs...
Read Chapter Four →
The Everglades — Chapter Three
August 1, 1945. The warehouse nears completion. The Nazis begin plotting their erosion of American society — and Von Unterscheisse delivers his first act of urban destruction...
Read Chapter Three →
The Everglades — Chapter Two
The four Nazis arrive at their Miami warehouse and begin planning their intergenerational conspiracy to subvert American society from within...
Read Chapter Two →
The Everglades — Chapter One
July 21, 1945. Two Nazi war criminals come ashore at Flamingo Point in the Florida Everglades, beginning a multi-generational conspiracy against America...
Read Chapter One →First Chapters — All Novels
Chapter One — The Everglades
July 21, 1945. The Everglades was arguably the most natural ecosystem on Earth. Through every assault upon the landscape, its resiliency...
Read Chapter One →
Chapter One — Madeline
Passion for Madeline never waned within the only man who'd loved her ethereally. The writer, who'd spent his entire life searching for her...
Read Chapter One →
Chapter One — Seeking Trinity
The sound of the canon from Key West's Mallory Square echoed faintly in Adam Phillip's consciousness. He stood overlooking the Gulf of Mexico...
Read Chapter One →
Chapter One — Task Force Vigilante
Madeline McVie was born into a family with two older brothers and a younger sister. Her brother Danny was four years her senior...
Read Chapter One →
Chapter One — The Surrency Affair
The Fruit Growers Express began operations on March 18, 1920, in Jacksonville, Florida. Men labored, loading and unloading refrigerated boxcars...
Read Chapter One →Florida Field Notes — Nonfiction
Draining Eden — The Men Who Tried to Conquer the Everglades
The seventy-year campaign to drain the Everglades — Disston's gamble, Broward's "Empire," Bolles selling swampland "by the gallon," and the woman who named it a river of grass. The history beneath the novel.
Read the Field Note →The Surrency Murders — A True Crime and an Uncertain Justice
The true 1936 Jacksonville murder behind the novel — a bootlegger accused, hired killers who recanted, and a coerced-testimony case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read the Field Note →Paper Paradises — The Florida Land Swindles of the 1920s
A paradise sold sight unseen — the binder boys, William Jennings Bryan hawking Coral Gables, Ponzi's swampland syndicate, and the hurricane that ended it, leaving the common man holding the paper.
Read the Field Note →The Ashley Gang — Motivated by the Common Man?
The outlaw "King of the Everglades" was, to the poor crackers who knew him, no mere bandit but a folk hero striking back at the banks and the powerful. Reign of terror, or strikes against the leviathan?
Read the Field Note →Florida Chain Gangs — Legalized Slavery
From the prison camp of Cool Hand Luke to the turpentine swamps where Martin Tabert was flogged to death — the convict-lease system that rebuilt slavery in Florida under a new name.
Read the Field Note →Beyond Bread and Circuses — Essays
College Football Will Destroy Society
A former Florida State punter on money, college sports, faith, and stability — why teaching young athletes to chase mammon over eternal principles threatens to fracture families and society. The first of a new column: essays on living deliberately, finding the eternal in the everyday.
Read the Essay →