Book Excerpt
Miss Dreamsville
and the Lost Heiress
of Collier County
By Amy Hill Hearth
Chapter 1
Dolores Simpson was a woman with
a past. Now, depending on your age
and where you’re from, you might
interpret that in a number of ways.
Let me assure you, however, that in
the southern part of the United
States of America, in a certain era,
this could mean only one thing: man
trouble.
This affliction spares few women. Even
maiden ladies and great aunties—the
ones who smile and nod on the porch,
contentedly snappin’ peas—have
stories of youthful turmoil and
shattered dreams.
Dolores Simpson, unfortunately, had
what my mama used to call serious
man trouble. After leading a
questionable life in Tampa, Dolores
came back home one summer day in
1939 with all her worldly goods in a
satchel under one arm and a brandnew baby boy in the other.
Yes, indeed. Serious man trouble.
Home, for Dolores, was one hundred
and twenty miles south of Tampa in
God’s forgotten paradise, Collier
County, which is bordered by the Gulf
of Mexico on one side and the edge
of the Great Everglades Swamp on the
other. In those days, Radio Havana in
Cuba was the only station that could
be heard on the wireless and alligators
outnumbered people by at least ten
thousand to one.
Dolores’s destination was an
abandoned fishing shack that once
belonged to her grandfather. The
shack sat on stilts on a tidal river
which was so wild and forbidding
that no one with an ounce of sense
would try to live there. Still, it was
all Dolores knew. She had failed at
city life. She had failed at pretty
much everything. The river was a
place where she could protect her
secrets and nurse her frustration
with the world.
And there she stayed, alone except
for the son she raised, for twentyfive years.
•••
I, TOO, HAILED FROM COLLIER
County, but instead of the river or
swamps I was raised nearby in Naples,
an itty-bitty town with a sandy strip
of beach on the Gulf.
I barely knew Dolores Simpson. She
was, shall we say, reclusive to an
extreme. My only knowledge of her
was that she had once been a stripper
but now hunted alligators for a living.
If she had been a man she would have
been admired as a fearless
frontiersman.
I wouldn’t have known even this much,
nor would I have met her, if not for
her son, Robbie-Lee. In the late
summer of 1962, he and I became
friends when we joined a new book
club called the Collier County
Women’s Literary Society. To its
members, the club provided a
sanctuary of sorts. Each of us was
a misfit or outcast in town—in my
case, because I had come back home
after a divorce—but in the book club
we discovered a place to belong.
It is one of the ironies of life that
being part of a group can, in turn, lead
you to find strength and independence
as an individual. That’s exactly what
happened to Robbie-Lee and me. After
a year in the book club, we decided it
was time to follow our dreams.
For Robbie-Lee, who loved the
theater, the only place on his mind
was New York City. He spoke endlessly
of Broadway and was determined to
get a job there, even if it meant
sweeping sidewalks. Dolores, whose
maternal instincts kicked in with a
mighty roar at the idea of him leaving
Collier County, objected to his
planned departure, but lost the battle.
Robbie-Lee caught a northbound bus
on a steamy August morning in 1963.
At the same time Robbie-Lee went
north I set off for Mississippi. I was
hoping to learn more about my
mother, who was born and raised
in Jackson. Mama had died without
telling me certain things. She never
talked about her family, or how she
met Daddy, or when and where they
got married. All I know is they got
hitched at a Methodist church
because Mama insisted on having
a bona fide preacher conduct the
ceremony. They left Mississippi and
came to Florida because Naples was
Daddy’s hometown.
What I hoped to find was kinfolk. An
aunt or uncle, perhaps. Or maybe a
cousin. Since I was a small child, M