With the arrival of the Conquistadors in the 16th century, ten thousand years of Indian civilization in Florida was wiped out within a generation. Five hundred years later, another pandemic plague—this time deliberately released by a group of terrorists—has decimated the world's population, and only one in a thousand has managed to survive. In Boca Chita, Book I of the NOEL trilogy, Mark, a sixty-two year old curmudgeon, manages to escape contamination with the deadly NOEL virus and uses his survival skills to homestead a deserted island in Biscayne Bay south of Miami. One year later, after a series of devastating natural disasters, Mark has met up with Doc Olga, and along with eight other NOEL survivors, has founded the colony of New Islandia in Islamorada, Florida. Calusa Coast, the second book in the trilogy, records the growing pains of the first year of the fledgling colony, a utopian community where money and real estate ownership is outlawed. Thanks to Mark’s efforts, electricity, water, and creature comforts have been restored in New Islandia, and the community actively begins to seek out other survivors to continue to grow. Determined to learn from history, the group draws upon the wisdom of Florida’s ancient Calusa civilization while embracing advanced modern technology, meanwhile trying to avoid the mistakes made by earlier schemers and scammers in Florida’s development. Among other struggling survivors who encounter the new community are Carla, an elderly mystic who claims to be the last full-blooded Calusa, Skyler, a half-breed Seminole Indian, who has rescued a deaf woman and her young son from the Everglades and a group of twelve Cuban-Calusas who have left Cuba in homemade dugout canoes, heading for the Calusa Coast, home of their extinct ancestors. An August hurricane sweeps past New Islandia and the group makes the difficult decision to relocate the now-thriving community to the St. Augustine area, the site of the oldest city in America. Just a year after founding New Islandia in the Keys, the new community, rechristened First Coast, has grown to more than 100. In First Coast, Book III of the NOEL trilogy, the new settlement grows into FlorEden, a network of interdependent Florida communities, following the original settlers and their descendents as they attempt to rebuild a devastated world.