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For fans of The Doctors Blackwell and A Woman of No Importance comes the story of Dr. Mabel E. Elliott, who cared for thousands of Armenian and Greek refugees through bullets, blizzards, and deadly disease following World War I. She continued her overseas service in 1925 and practiced for 16 years in earthquake-ravaged Tokyo, revolutionizing healthcare for mothers and children.

Dr. Mabel E. Elliott, an American physician, served in Turkey, Armenia, and Greece from 1919 to 1923, helping Armenian and Greek refugees and orphans following World War I for Near East Relief and American Women’s Hospitals, humanitarian organizations that served the region. She saw unimaginable massacres and torture while caring for thousands of refugees and orphans.
Rose Wilder Lane, journalist and novelist, worked for the American Red Cross and Near East Relief from 1919 to 1923. Dr. Elliott agreed to work on a book for Near East Relief, and the two collaborated on a sweeping memoir that combined Dr. Elliott’s experiences with Rose Wilder Lane’s research on Armenia and its history. The result was a book that became one of the best-known memoirs of the post-World War I Middle East. Lane was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, and Lane served as editor on her mother’s Little House series of books.
Dr. Elliott’s engaging reports and letters were a publicity mainstay for the Near East Relief and American Women’s Hospital organizations to help tell the refugee and orphan story to the American public. Dr. Elliott’s Battle of Marash siege diary is a harrowing tale of her three-day trek leading Armenian refugees across mountains in a blizzard in Turkey. Rose Wilder Lane wrote articles about Armenia for several American magazines, including Good Housekeeping.
Lane’s collaboration with Dr. Elliott on her book was hidden for more than a century, uncovered during research for Dr. Elliott’s biography, Unbreakable Healer. Lane’s rumored “Armenian book,” thought lost or never finished, was found.
Dr. Elliott’s forthright tales and Rose Wilder Lane’s soaring prose make for a book that places the reader in the middle of America’s efforts to care for refugees and orphans in Turkey and Armenia a century ago.

Foreword by Sallie Ketcham; edited by G. L. Pedersen.
41 illustrations, footnotes, index.

January 1920. The city of Marash, Turkey, erupts in chaos as Turkish Nationalists lay siege to the streets. Inside the Near East Relief hospital, Dr. Mabel E. Elliott and her staff fight to save lives while trapped under relentless gunfire. Food runs short. Wounded flood in. Escape seems impossible.
Dr. Elliott’s firsthand account plunges readers into those desperate weeks of terror and courage, when survival hung by a thread. Her story reaches its climax in a dramatic flight with retreating French troops, an exodus across the snow-choked Taurus Mountains, battling blizzards and exhaustion at every step.
Long hidden in newspaper microfilm, this unabridged narrative is one of the most gripping accounts of the Battle of Marash ever written. Raw, immediate, and unforgettable, it reveals the ordeal that later inspired Elliott’s 1924 memoir Beginning Again at Ararat.
This is history lived on the edge, told by the woman who endured it.

Ambitious young reporter Kate Brennan thought she had found a tranquil paradise. Instead, a fateful meeting with Lena Clarke, the spinster postmistress of West Palm Beach, Florida, entangles Kate in Lena’s mysterious and delusional life. Clarke’s obsession with snakes, foreign spies, and the supernatural led to one of 1921’s most bizarre crime sprees. This true crime story recounts Lena Clarke’s downfall following the tragic death of her most trusted confidant. As officials closed in on Clarke’s scheme, she fled and hid out in a hotel room where she unleashed a night of terror. In the spirit of In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this haunting tale from Florida Authors and Publishers Association and Historical Society of Palm Beach County award-winning authors G.L. Pedersen and J.M. Naughton will appeal to true crime and mystery novel fans of all ages.

Byrd Spilman Dewey, Florida’s Pioneer author, captured the adventures of the Blessed Isle cat and dog families in her whimsical 1907 book The Blessed Isle and its Happy Families. The many memorable cats and dogs at Ben Trovato, the Dewey’s lakeside estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, have their tales told by their muse and resident caretaker. The dogs Foozle and Van, along with Catsie, Roi, Deedie, and all the Blessed Isle cats, adventure in the sometimes dangerous wilds that once covered old West Palm Beach. Upon the thickets of sand pine, oak, and palms, the Dewey pets enjoyed their personal paradise with Byrd and Fred Dewey.

For more than a century, Palm Beach County’s libraries have nurtured and shaped Florida’s unique history. From early residents’ efforts to bring literacy and a love of reading to the vast tropical wilderness of the nineteenth century, to modern-day book festivals celebrating the written word, Overdue in Paradise honors Palm Beach County’s individuals, social institutions, and municipal governments that created a culture of literacy in one of Florida’s largest and most prominent regions. Palm Beach County’s vast collections of books, media, and reference materials are both a cause and result of its cultural diversity, and have left an enduring legacy on residents and visitors alike. Overdue in Paradise: The Library History of Palm Beach County recounts the beginnings of many of South Florida’s earliest libraries.

From Pine Woods to Palm Groves is a delightful tale of pioneer life in Palm Beach County. Byrd Spilman Dewey, Florida’s Pioneer Author, tells of her life in 19th-century Palm Beach, before Henry Flagler built his resorts and made Palm Beach the playground of the rich and famous. The book tells of the Dewey’s first pioneer homestead, nestled in the sand pine woods. She describes her encounters with the Seminole Indians and surviving in the unforgiving South Florida climate. Their grand estate, Ben Trovato, nestled in a palm grove, is then revealed, a stunning Victorian cottage on the shores of Lake Worth. Be enchanted by a long-lost time in a wild and new paradise called Palm Beach. Also includes the bonus story The Tale of Satan.

From West Palm Beach’s beginnings as a service town to Palm Beach, Standard Oil tycoon Henry Morrison Flagler’s resort village, the city has evolved into a trendy art, cultural, and shopping mecca. Palm Beach County’s largest city serves as the county seat and center of business, government, and commerce. Taming America’s last frontier saw the industriousness of pioneers and settlers such as Marion Gruber, the Potter brothers, George Lainhart, and Max Greenberg guide the Cottage City of yesteryear to today’s gleaming metropolis. Meet many of West Palm Beach’s pioneers, civic leaders, educators, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Learn about the heroes, celebrities, philanthropists, and even the villains who have contributed to the mosaic of West Palm Beach.

This classic tale of a beloved dog takes place in Florida’s early days. Join Bruno on his adventures as he explores the wilds of South Florida with his human friends, Judith and Julius. Bruno will win your heart as he has with countless others for more than a century. The book was a New Your Times bestseller in 1899, selling well over 100,000 copies in its first year. It is considered a classic in dog literature. This illustrated edition of Bruno has been authorized by the estate of Byrd Spilman Dewey and has been completely re-typeset and contains the bonus postscript story to Bruno, “Rebecca,” not found in any other edition of Bruno.

Compiled for the first time, Florida pioneer author Byrd Spilman Dewey’s books, short stories, magazine articles, newspaper articles, and essays bring back a forgotten South Florida paradise of more than a century ago. This volume includes her national bestseller Bruno and the books From Pine Woods to Palm Groves and The Blessed Isle and its Happy Families, along with her shorter pieces of fiction and nonfiction, many written under the pen name of Judith Sunshine. Read the enchanting tales of the Dewey’s life in their beloved South Florida and the Lake Worth Country with their menagerie of cats and dogs that graced their Florida homesteads.

Palm Beach’s sunny and idyllic shores had humble beginnings as a wilderness of sawgrass and swamps only braved by the hardiest of souls. Two such adventurers were Fred and Byrd Spilman Dewey, who pioneered in central Florida before discovering the tropical beauty of Palm Beach in 1887. Though their story was all but lost, this dynamic couple was vital in transforming the region from a rough backcountry into a paradise poised for progress. Authors Ginger Pedersen and Janet DeVries Naughton trace the remarkable history of the Deweys in South Florida from their beginnings on the isolated frontier to entertaining the likes of the Flaglers, Vanderbilts, Phippses, Cluetts, Clarkes and other Palm Beach elite. Using Birdie’s autobiographical writings from her best-selling books to fill in the gaps, Pedersen and DeVries narrate a chapter in Florida’s history that has remained untold until now.