Eula Lee Whaley. Public Information Officer for Works County Sheriff's Department and co-host of Daybreak in Dixie.

Dot Whaley. Musician, Whalin' Whaley and the Whalers.

Leon Hobbes, Works County Sheriff.

Wild Man Calhoun, co-host of Daybreak in Dixie. Outdoors writer and former host of radio show called Daybreak in Dixie.

Works Writers Guild. Meets at library once a month. Also called Works Works. Give her the works. Or dança na corba bamba! Shoot Niagara!

Dave Johnson. Feature writer for Balmy Breezes. Writing book, Black Harvest. About land developers. Writes a column, "Pasquinades." Working title of Black Harvest THE WAKULLA VOLCANO. Also sometimes DARK HOPES. Johnson has a web site called Rumor, Fear, and the Madness of Crowds.

Bob James Bell. Sabal Land Company. We're in the black. Mermaid Lodge. Mermaid Springs. Water Nymphs. Sabal Palm. Live it and love it.

Ann. Johnson's wife. IT person for Tarpon City Junior College library. Lives near campus. Had been office automation specialist at Sabal CI.

Blader and Alden, Johnson and Ann's sons. Musicians. Married, with children. So Johnson and Ann are grandparents. When they play together they call themselves the Johnson Valley Boys, by analogy with the Johnson Mountain Boys.

Sam and Dolly. Johnson and Ann's friends in New Orleans. They keep copies of Johnson's manuscripts in an archive, or shrine. They have read everything he's written. 300 books. He has written over 300 books.

Mitch, publisher of Balmy Breezes. Published Johnson's Tales From the Underground

Timothy Prince, owner of Cultural Resources Management (CRM), a contract archeology shop on the reservation at Eglin AFB, up towards Mossy Head. Also a hidden partner in Southern Waste Systems (SWS)

OCAT squad. Organized Crime - Anti-Terrorism. A rat's nest of garbage.

Henry Chatsworth. Owned motels, nightclubs, a bank. Was a force in the Tourism Development Council (TDC) and a member of the Redneck Mafia.

Detective Singer, Sabal County sheriff's office. Investigates Johnson's fire, or pair of fires.

Garwood P. Jones (Gar Wood) Singer/songwriter from Wakulla County. Holds a hootenanny called Wakulla Wing Ding at campground in Newport.

Mack (or Slim, or Em) McElderry. 12-string Dobro picker.

Jack Rudloe. Marine biologist. Runs Gulf Specimen Laboratory in Panacea, Florida

Michelle Prince, Timothy Prince's wife.

Sabal City. County seat of Sabal County. Sabal CI outside town, in the country.

The Inlet. On the coast, between Deep Port and Tarpon City. Coastal.

Deep Port. New courthouse, sheriff's office. Former home of paper mill. Now home of Sabal Land Company.

Tarpon City. County seat of Works County. An airport, a junior college, a regional library, shopping malls, cineplexes. People in Sabal City drive to Tarpon City (or Deep Port) to shop.

Doolittle AFB. Between Tarpon City and The Inlet. Raccoon Island Beach is on the base.

Austerlitz, a suburb of Tarpon City. On Austerlitz Bayou. Near Doolitte AFB.

Newport. State Forest Service campground across from entrance to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

Williams Landing. Boat ramp on Aucilla River near Nutall Rise.

Mermaid Springs. State park once owned by Bob James Bell. Mermaid Lodge open to public. Water Nymphs was filmed there. Also The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Panacea. Sleepy little fishing village.

Seaside, Rosemary Beach, Sweet Basil. Upscale communities on Florida's Emerald Coast.

Johnson's trailer is burned down. He has pissed in too many people's rice bowls.

He has a message on his answering machine at work implying that the fire was set deliberately.

The rented storage shed where he keeps his manuscripts, his life's-work, is burned down, too.

Eula Lee offers to let him stay with her, in Austerlitz. She does research for him.

Ann does research for him.

Sam and Dolly help with research.

Johnson is interviewed by the detective investigating his fire, Singer, who says he, Johnson, is "bait."

Johnson talks to Mitch, his publisher, about what is happening. Mitch continues to publish him, serializes his novel. Johnson uses himself as bait. He presents to be mounted to see who mounts him.

Johnson drives to the CRM compound and is turned away. They know who he is.

Johnson visits Sam and Dolly in New Orleans. He stops by the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs.

Back at home, the detective, Singer, Ann, Eula Lee, and Sam and Dolly, are on the case. Also Gar Wood, over in Wakulla County, lends support.

Johnson attends Wakulla Wing Ding in Newport, across from the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge. Meets Garwood Jones.

Johnson visits Mack McElderry in Panacea on the way home.

Eula Lee's house is burned down. Eula Lee, inside, is killed. Johnson stays with Ann in her apartment.

Johnson drives to Florida's Emerald Coast, to scope out the house of Timothy and Michelle Prince.

Timothy and Michelle are killed by an intruder.

Johnson gets a one-year job as a technical writer, out of town, for $32 an hour, plus per diem. He can send money home to Ann, to replace her trailer for a retirement home.