News/Events

’The Music Makers’ Receives a
5-Star Review by Literary Titan

James D. Snyder’s The Music Makers is a gripping novel about life under dictatorship and the struggle for freedom.
Set in East Berlin during the pivotal year of 1989, it follows a group of characters, ordinary people caught in the gears of a failing system as they find ways to resist oppression in their own small but meaningful ways. From Greta, a spirited schoolteacher with a rebellious streak, to Max, a mechanic with dreams of escape, and Heidi, a quiet but determined librarian, Snyder weaves together their stories against the backdrop of a crumbling regime.

As the Berlin Wall trembles, the book paints a deeply personal picture of what it meant to live on the edge of history.

The novel doesn't just recount historical events; it immerses you in them. The opening letter from Greta, smuggled inside a pair of boots, immediately sets the tone. She’s planning a small act of defiance, selling black-market white asparagus and red carnations at the May Day parade. It's risky, even foolish, but it speaks to her spirit.

And that’s what this book does so well: it captures the quiet, everyday acts of resistance that often get lost in grander historical narratives. Even the street organ scenes, where people gather to waltz in defiance of the dull uniformity of the regime, feel like a protest in their own right. Snyder doesn’t just tell us what happened, he makes us feel the tension, the fear, and the hope. Another strength of The Music Makers is its characters. They aren’t just symbols; they feel real. Max, the young mechanic who dreams of fleeing to the West, isn't a polished hero; he's a restless, impulsive kid who fixes cars for extra cash and plays in a rock band that blares illegal Western music. Heidi, his sister, is cautious but brave in her own way, secretly checking out books that could land her in trouble. Even Gerhard, the Stasi officer, is more than just a villain; he's a man caught in a system he doesn't fully believe in but feels powerless to escape.

The novel’s structure, which includes interview-style segments where the characters speak directly to the “author,” adds depth, as if they’re aware that history is watching them and deciding how they’ll be remembered.

Snyder’s writing is sharp and unpretentious. He doesn’t bog the story down with heavy-handed metaphors or flowery descriptions. Instead, he lets the setting and dialogue do the work.

There’s a casual, almost journalistic style to some sections, especially the excerpts from Greta’s satirical “Lessons in Leadership,” which read like a darkly funny (and unsettlingly accurate) guide to authoritarian rule. The humor in these sections adds a layer of biting irony, making the book more than just a grim retelling of history, it’s a warning. It’s a reminder that oppression thrives on complacency and that freedom is always something that has to be fought for, whether in the streets or in small, everyday choices.

I’d recommend The Music Makers to anyone who enjoys historical fiction that feels immediate and personal. It’s for readers who appreciate stories about resilience, about people who refuse to accept the world as it is and instead try to shape it into something better. It’s a book that lingers in your mind, making you think not just about the past but about the present. Because, as Snyder seems to be asking, what good is history if we don’t learn from it?

Rating: 5 Stars
Priscilla Evans, Managing Editor, Literary Titan

Diving for Sunken Treasure? Don’t Forget Your Diving Bell

We’ve all read the tales of Spanish treasure ships sunk by plundering pirates or smashed by storms on treacherous reefs. But what of the gold and silver that spilled into the seas? Is it still there, waiting to be retrieved?

Perhaps, but in most cases, someone may have already retrieved most of it.

Explaining requires a bit of background. The Spain of five and more centuries ago relied heavily on gold and silver from its colonies in the “New World” to finance its far-flung empire. Each fall, a convoy of a dozen or so ships would head home, laden with gold and silver collected from colonial mines and ports along the way. Back home, armies of accountants kept track of shipments and inventoried everything unloaded by arriving ships. Today their meticulous and well-preserved records provide a treasure trove of Spanish history.

With so much at stake, you can see why the Spanish also had a well-established system for salvaging sunken ships and retrieving all the precious metals possible.

I learned a lot about it – and how it shed light on Florida history - when researching the book, Jonathan Dickinson. To wit:

In 1656, the las Nuestra Senora Marvillas was leading a convoy carrying 650 passengers and a huge cargo of gold and silver when a storm rammed it into a reef near Grand Bahama Cay. All 650 persons drowned and the treasure sunk with the ship.

Two years later the Spanish were back at the site to scoop up everything they could from the sea bottom. How did they do it? The biggest salvage ship carried what looked just like a church steeple bell, about twelve feet tall. Inside was a welded-on bench wide enough to seat two men. When lowered to within a few feet from the sea bottom, the divers inside could swim out in search of coins or bars of gold and silver. Waiting outside the diving bell was a large basket that could be hoisted aboard ship when full.

So how did the men breathe? Instead of surfacing after each dive, they would swim back inside the bell, which had retained enough air to last the divers an hour or so.

Well then, who did the diving? Here we have a link to early Florida history.

The master salvage ship needed fresh water, meat and other supplies. The nearest source was Jupiter Inlet, just fifty or so miles across the Bahamas Channel. All this required one or two avisos, which were smaller, nimble courier ships. And as they shuttled back and forth, it’s very likely that they were also carrying divers from among the small Jeaga tribe who lived along Jupiter Inlet.

How can we be sure? Spanish records show that n 1659 an aviso named the Francisco San y San Antonio sunk outside Jupiter Inlet near an Indian village cited as “Gega.” In 1670 another aviso, the San Miguel de Arcangel, sunk not far from it. While the first wreck has never been found, the San Miguel, its cannons and a trove of treasure, was discovered in1987 by a latter-day diver – a Jupiter lifeguard while out for an early morning swim. The overwhelming odds are that both were supply ships tethered to the salvage project off Grand Bahama Cay. And they reinforce the evidence that local Indians had interacted with the Spanish since the days of Ponce de Leon in the sixteenth century.

Whales in Florida? Absolutely! For 500 Years!

In mid-January January, local TV showed dozens of people on the Jupiter-Juno Beach shoreline watching as a right whale and her calf glided by on a “winter vacation” from their home waters off Nova Scotia.

It was a goosebump moment for me because in the novel La Florida I created some scenes in which the Jeaga Indians of Jupiter Inlet would earn tattoos for bravery every winter by canoeing among passing pods of right whales and spearing some for their meat, oil and ambergris.

I didn’t just make it up. While researching the book, I came upon no less than four accounts in sixteenth century Spanish records. Here’s a 1590 account by one Joseph Acosta:

The Indians get into a canoe, and paddling, approach the side of the whale and with great agility [one man] leaps upon the back of its neck and there he rides, waiting an opportunity. He inserts a stout and sharp stick through one nostril of the whale...then strikes it very hard with another stick. The whale storms and thrashes in the sea and raises up mountains of water and dives into it with fury, and returns to leap, not understanding what causes its rage.

The Indian is very quiet and valiant and the reward produced by the wild behavior is that he thrusts another similar stick in the other nostril...so that it closes for good and stops the breathing. And with this he returns to his canoe that he has fastened to the side of the whale with a rope. And giving line to the whale, which is long as it is in deep water, struggles from side to side as if crazed from anger, where with the enormity of its body, quickly runs aground.

Here, a large group of Indians finish the killing and divide it and cut it into pieces, and from its abundant tough meat, drying it and grinding it, they make a true powder that they use for their food, and it lasts for a very long time.

Scenes like this help explain why, instead of dozens of right whales floating by the Jeaga Indians, observers in 2023 spotted only one mother with her calf.

But there’s something hopeful and reassuring that Nature is still calling whales to Florida some 500 years later. With a cadre of scientific agencies, drones and computers now tracking the annual whale migration - and with killing outlawed - perhaps the right whale census will soon increase.

An Audio Introduction to Trapper Nelson

Members of the large Florida Trail Association often trek through the 11,000-acre Jonathan Dickinson State Park and they unfailingly want to know more about the “celebrity hermit” who once owned much of its land along its Loxahatchee River. One of the trail walkers is Misti Little, a prominent podcaster and blogger, who decided to get acquainted with Vince “Trapper” Nelson by asking me about my book, Life and Death on the Loxahatchee.

The 45-minute interview is part of a series of podcasts entitled Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast. You can access it on iTunes and Spotify. Or…. just click the link below:
http://orangeblaze.thegardenpathpodcast.com/2023/04/16/82-untangling-the-folklore-of-the-legend-of-the-loxahatchee-trapper-nelson-james-d-snyder/

Now Presenting: the First Films of Trapper Nelson

We recently introduced an expanded, updated edition of Life and Death on the Loxahatchee before a sold-out crowd at the Jonathan Dickinson State Park environmental center. Even “newer” was the first-ever films showing the legendary Trapper Nelson in his camp over 70 years ago.

For these home movies we can thank Trapper’s grandnephew Philip Celmer (at left in the photo). During his boyhood, Phil’s family from New Jersey began spending summer vacations with their famous Florida relative. Now 77, Phil recently discovered a treasure trove of four-color home movies filmed in the 1950s when many tour boats visited our “celebrity hermit” in his jungle habitat. Phil’s recall of details about life in a boy’s paradise was amazing – and entertaining.