Amazon.com description: Product Description: One morning Tyler MacCauley's father wakes up next to a dead man, gathers his family, and flees New York. For the next five and a half years, the MacCauleys see few people who don't call the Florida swamp home. Then, in 1906, within days of each other, two strangers show up at the MacCauley settlement on Lostman's River. The first offers Tyler's father a job killing birds for their plumes and alligators for their hides, and is turned away. The second asks thirteen-year-old Ty to be his guide through the area, on what he calls a scientific expedition. For three dollars a day, enough to ease his family's poverty, Ty agrees to accompany the "strange little man." The expedition sets in motion a series of events that make Ty question his own values, wonder about degrees of treachery, and worry about the future of the place he has grown to love. And it forces the MacCauleys to confront their greatest fear...