Light a Distant Fire

Osceola grows up amid the repeated displacement of Seminole communities as Andrew Jackson’s campaigns and expanding United States settlement push Indigenous and Black Seminole families deeper into Florida. Daily life, Green Corn ceremonies, family loyalties and refuge in the wetlands are set against treaties that demand removal west of the Mississippi. Osceola’s refusal to accept those terms turns him from a respected young hunter into a leading voice of resistance.

When the Second Seminole War begins, the swamps and hammocks of Florida allow small groups to frustrate a much larger army, but disease, hunger and betrayal steadily reduce their freedom. A fictional officer, John Goode, offers a divided military perspective as he comes to understand the people he has been ordered to remove. The narrative culminates in Osceola’s seizure under a flag of truce and his death in captivity in 1838.