Deb Rogers’s debut novel Florida Woman follows Jamie Hawthorne, a young waitress who receives the “Florida woman” title after appearing in a video committing a Benny-Hill-style crime against her employer involving, among other things, a pelican. To avoid jail time, she takes up a community service opportunity at Atlas: a central Florida wildlife refuge run by a group of mysterious women with radical beliefs about the land they live on, the herpes-infected monkeys that inhabit it, and the value of human life. The longer Jamie stays at Atlas, the more transfixed she becomes on the women, their ideas, and the monkeys. That is, until the dark secrets she uncovers shatter her faith and endanger her life.