10/13/05

 Author sets mystery on Babcock Ranch

 Sara Williams, a former Southwest Florida journalist turned author, writes about romance, murder and politics in her latest novel, "The Seranoa Scandal."

 But the story is really about Babcock Ranch.

 Williams set her novel within the 91,362-acre ranch and its pristine, 10,000-acre Telegraph Cypress Swamp. Her goal was to heighten appreciation for South Florida's vanishing agricultural landscape, she said.

 The landscape is "dwindling before an implacable tide of suburban development," she warns in a blurb on her Web site.

 "My real aim with the book was not to get into politics," Williams said Wednesday in a phone interview from her summer home in the San Juan
 Islands of Washington state. "It was to say, 'Hey, take a real look at this (Florida) country because you won't be seeing it for long.'"

 Raised on a Washington farm, the English literature graduate and industrial magazine writer worked at the Fort Myers News-Press from 1983-96. "The Seranoa Scandal" is her second book.

 Her first, titled "The Don Juan Con," is about a man who cons women out of their valuables and a victim who tries to get even. That book is set in Fort Myers, where Williams and her husband spend their winters.

 "The book was kind of my way of warning women not to mix emotions with their bank accounts," she said.

 "The Don Juan Con" is slated to be made into a movie by producer Robert Evans, who also produced "Love Story," "The Godfather" and "Chinatown."

 "Seranoa" tells the story of the Menecal family, early day conservationists and creative stewards of a vast ranch located in fictional Calusa County.

 The word "seranoa" is the botanical name of the saw palmetto, which commonly creates the jungle beneath the canopy of Florida's forests.

 As the story unfolds, patriarch David Menecal, a character Williams said is based on big Florida ranchers like Ben Hill Griffin, is murdered. He dies in his wife's arms -- and she knows who killed him.

 At one point, the "terrible boyfriend" of Menecal's widow flees a pack of bloodhounds into Telegraph Cypress Swamp. He runs into a stream teeming with gators.

 The suspect, a "local boy" named Lew Leaming, skillfully makes a croaking sound to call the gators. Then he dashes away, leaving the gators to draw the dogs off his trail.

 "I learned to call gators myself as a newspaper reporter visiting with the wranglers on the Babcock Ranch," Williams said.

 While at the paper, Williams wrote a weekly column about the "sandwich generation" -- the moms who struggle to both raise their children and care for elderly parents.

 Her job as a lifestyle columnist took her to Babcock Ranch, where she featured its ecotourism and gator farming.

 On her Web site (www.sarawilliamsnovelist.com), Williams describes Southwest Florida's ranchlands as "a tropical wild West in many places as exotic as some African veldt."

 She points out that ranching is rooted deeper in Florida's history than industry, tourism or retirement. But it's now being uprooted by real estate development.

 "This is not only pristine and historic wilderness, but also a major Southwest Florida watershed," she writes of Babcock Ranch. "It's my hope that this splendid property be preserved."

 Williams said she drew her murder plot for "The Seranoa Scandal" from a true story about a rancher Williams heard about during her time with the News-Press.

 In that case, an 80-year-old Muse rancher and real estate developer, who was a hunting buddy of the governor, was murdered in the late 1980s. Williams said she knew a neighbor of the family.

 "His wife survived the murder and she knew who the murderers were," said Williams. "I borrowed this same element for the wife of my character, Maya Menecal."

 After her book was published, Williams learned that Downs was murdered a day after he was secretly indicted on suspicion he had financed drug deals, Williams said.

 Downs' murderers were quickly caught and jailed. However, the lead suspect was later freed on a technicality, Williams said.

 "People in Hendry and Glades counties were outraged," Williams recalls. "My friend, the writer Barbara Oehlbeck, asked me to join a group of media people who could raise hell about this, which I did.

 "So the murderer, a convicted felon, was rearrested on firearms charges and he's still in prison to this day," Williams said.

 In "The Seranoa Scandal," the Menecal character has a "much higher political profile," she says.

 "He's not just a hunting buddy of the governor; he's a leader in governor 'Cracker' Milne's re-election campaign," she said. "David Menecal is trying to revive the moribund economy of fictional Calusa County by bringing a new university to his area. He campaigns to have this university established on some marginal cane land that is a part of his enormous ranch."

 Bits of her story parallel reality. Developer Kitson & Partners has signed a contract to buy the ranch from the Babcock family. The deal calls for the state to buy 74,000 acres for conservation, and for Kitson to build a city on the rest.

 And Florida Gulf Coast University is planning to build a research center on the ranch.

 Williams, who began writing the novel eight years ago, says she finds her own prescience "bizarre." She says she followed the Babcock deal in the newspaper while in Fort Myers last winter.

 "I thought, well isn't this amazing, because it's exactly what I feared," she said.

 You can e-mail Greg Martin at gmartin@sun-herald.com.
 By GREG MARTIN

Staff Writer
 

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