From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, the gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century.“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -Washington Post In 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. In the end, only four survived: three Spaniards and an African slave. Enduring a horrific march through Florida, a harrowing raft passage across the Louisiana coast, and years of enslavement in the American Southwest, this tiny band of castaways journeyed across an unknown land for almost ten years in search of the Pacific Ocean that would guide them home. Now updated with a new afterword, A Land So Strange brings to life the vast, dynamic world of North America just a few years before European settlers would transform it forever.