A compelling and timely study of the migrant workers who cut cane for large American sugar companies in Southern Florida provides an inside look at the difficult lives of the workers and at their exploitation by the powerful sugar industry Wilkinson's earlier books, Midnights ( LJ 7/82), a memoir about local police on Cape Cod, and Moonshine ( LJ 8/85), a look at stills in North Carolina, have established him as a sensitive observer of out-of-the-way places and experiences. Here, he turns to Florida's vast but largely unknown sugar cane industry and the rural communities--Clewiston, Belle Glade, Pahokee, Moore Haven--where the cane is grown and harvested. Central to the story is the brutish life of the men, mostly Jamaicans or other West Indians, who work the fields. Poor and uneducated, they are exploited, says Wilkinson, by the U.S. Sugar Corporation and other large companies; as recently as 1942 charges of peonage were brought against U.S. Sugar. For serious social science collections and most Florida libraries. - Kenneth F. Kister, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. "Quite simply one of the finest works of reportage on any subject to have appeared in years...Disturbing and profound."--The Los Angeles Times From the Trade Paperback edition.