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The Author

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Writing such a book would be a challenge, no matter the circumstances. Martin's odds were longer than most. In addition to his physical deterioration, he had never written a book. He hadn't studied writing. He didn't have friends in publishing to guide him through the process. Beyond that, he didn't even know much about the Seminoles or their war with America.

Rather than dwell on these obstacles, Martin set about overcoming them. He dove into research, starting with old newspaper articles he had photocopied and sent to him by librarians back in Florida. Over long-distance phone calls, he pestered historians for details. When he was satisfied with his research, he selected his characters, some fictional, some much less so. Zachary Taylor and Andrew Jackson made appearances. A few tight-bodiced women surfaced as love interests. Martin crafted a plot spiced with bullwhips that tore open the shoulders of recalcitrant slaves. Then he set about writing it.

He referred to Freedom Land as his blockbuster novel, but as he ground out his first draft he typed dialogue that can charitably be appraised as wooden. "He was 30 years old and stood five-feet-ten-inches tall," is a typical description. "Jamina climbed into his bed and they made passionate love," is a typical sex scene.

"It's not Dostoyevsky," Carol admits.

When his hands started fading on him, Martin used only his index finger to type out his chapters. Carol soon began typing for him. When he needed to read a book for research, she turned the pages. To pay for therapy and medications and doctor's visits, they liquidated all their investments, even selling Martin's thoroughbred racehorses. Carol took a second job. After two years with the disease, he and Carol decided to move back to Miami so he could be closer to the ALS center at Jackson Hospital.

In Miami, Martin's condition worsened. Carol drove him to therapy almost every day. She took him to doctors' appointments at Jackson, dragging him from his wheelchair into the car, no easy feat. The passing of every month brought further decline. His face started to freeze, making it hard for Carol to read his moods. He had trouble eating the food she liquefied in a blender for him, and his weight began to plummet. He was tired most of the day.

"It was sad seeing my best friend deteriorate in front of me," Carol says. "It was very hard to watch a loved one not only just die, but see him just totally degenerate."

Still they worked on the book. Facing his computer, Carol at his side typing, Martin slid into another dimension, into the Nineteenth Century. For a while at least, he forgot about his body and the doctors and whatever was hurting him. When his energy flagged, Carol put him to bed. When he regained his strength, at whatever hour, they returned together to the computer. Every day they wrote.

"If I had something like ALS, I'd say, 'Well, the hell with it. I'm going to retire and go fishing,'" says Dr. Bradley at Jackson Memorial. "Not Martin. Writing the book was important to him. I think in a sense it gave him a mission."

Carol had always considered herself a free spirit. Now, with Martin's never-ending needs, she became much more organized. She fed him. She bathed him. Mucus that a healthy person reflexively cleans from the throat would fall back into Martin's lungs. She cleared it out. At first there were caregivers at his side a couple of hours a day. Even then Carol had to stick around to put out whatever fires might arise. If she didn't set out Martin's urine bottle, for instance, the caregivers wouldn't know where to find it. Her life remained on hold.

"Once I would help him into bed I could leave him alone for awhile," she says. "But one time he went to answer the phone, he didn't realize he was losing his ability to control himself, and he fell out of bed. That's when I knew I really couldn't leave him alone anymore."

Martin needed Carol to give him his drugs. All kinds of drugs. Rilutek to protect nerve cells and the Sanofi drug to breathe easier. Gabapentin to decrease his body's production of glutamine. Martin would try anything, including, literally, snake oil. There was a snake venom that some study said would help. He asked Carol to inject him. She was afraid of needles, but he insisted. "When I jabbed the needle into him, I ripped open his flesh," Carol remembers. "I screamed. I hurt him so much. I felt so bad for him. He said he was sorry he'd made me do it, but I felt so bad, I wanted to leave right then and there. 'What am I doing here?'"

Run away. Catch a bus. Why not? Why did she stay? All her friends asked her that, constantly. So many people were amazed she stuck around to take care of him. She and Martin weren't married. She didn't owe him anything. Wasn't she the one who always left her men? Didn't she leave one husband after just six weeks? After a road trip? What was she doing now, virtually enslaved by a dying man?

"I loved him," Carol explains. "He was my best friend and my business partner. I could never leave somebody who was in that situation. People would actually tell me to leave, but it was too heartbreaking. And so selfish."

Carol stayed on as Martin descended into the final stages of ALS. As his body inched toward complete paralysis, they managed to finish a draft of the book. They found an agent and the agent led them to a small firm in New York willing to publish it. A freelance editor scrutinized the draft, sending back a long list of suggestions on plot, structure, dialogue, and characters. Every fact needed to be checked. In one scene, Abraham, an educated former slave leading the Maroons, whistled a song that didn't exist when the story supposedly took place. Martin searched the Internet until he found a more appropriate tune.

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