Palm Beach, December 1956. Ruth Paley has the job of her life: recording secretary to the committee planning the island's first great charity ball of the season. Her work is simple. Write down what happens.

Then a committee member proposes a name for the honoree list — Bula Croker, the Cherokee widow who spent twenty years beating the island's most powerful families in court. The room agrees it's a marvelous thought. Warmly. Completely. And then the next item is the budget.

Nothing is linked. Everything is understood.

Meeting by meeting, Ruth learns what her minutes are really for — what the record keeps, and who it buries.

Based on the true story of Bula Croker, the widow Palm Beach erased so thoroughly that the island's own historical society holds no file on her. A companion story to the Buried Florida series, The Stories Florida Buried.

No Further Business is the companion story to the Buried Florida episode on Bula Croker — fiction that imagines what the historical record left out.

"No Further Business"

by Roz Stevens