High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom`s Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida following the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville to help her son recover from the wounds he received as a Union soldier and to give him something to concentrate on apart from alcohol. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region, she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, although the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves were published in a newspaper run by Stowe`s brother as a series of letters and essays about her observations of the people and natural environment of Florida.