Reality Reads: A nonfiction book club

Buy from Bookshop.org

Over the last decade, Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Here, she recounts an untold story as significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by those living on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

While citizens of the thirteen rebelling colonies came to blows with the British Empire over tariffs and parliamentary representation, the situation on the rest of the continent was even more fraught. In the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast, as both sides competed for allegiances with the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations who inhabited the region. Meanwhile, African American slaves had little control over their own lives, but some individuals found opportunities to expand their freedoms.

Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom…