Protecting Providence
“Faith. Endurance. Different worlds. One survival.”
Historical Drama • Survival • True Story
After a violent storm wrecks the Reformation along Florida’s Atlantic coast in 1696, Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson, his family and their fellow survivors face a desperate journey toward Saint Augustine. Stranded between cultures, threatened by starvation and exposure, and sustained by fragile alliances, they discover how much faith is worth when nearly everything else has been taken away.
Coming Soon
About the Book
In the fall of 1696, Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson sets sail aboard the Reformation with his wife Mary, their infant son, and a diverse group of passengers and companions. Their destination is the American colonies. Instead, a violent storm drives their ship onto the Florida coast near Jupiter, leaving them stranded hundreds of miles from safety.
Shipwrecked, exhausted and nearly defenseless, the survivors face hunger, illness, exposure and encounters with Indigenous communities whose lands they must cross. Unable to communicate and initially mistaken for enemies of Spain, the castaways find themselves dependent upon fragile alliances, diplomacy—and one another—to stay alive.
Among them is Solomon, a multilingual Black sailor whose ability to speak Spanish becomes crucial to their survival. As the group struggles north toward Spanish-controlled Saint Augustine, every mile tests the faith of Jonathan, Mary, Quaker elder Robert Barrow and the other survivors. Some people they encounter threaten them; others offer food, shelter or mercy.
Based on the true account of Jonathan Dickinson, Protecting Providence is a historical survival drama about faith under extraordinary circumstances and the collision of cultures in early colonial America. It is a story of English and Spanish, Quakers and Catholics, Africans and Indigenous peoples—and of ordinary human beings forced to depend upon people from very different worlds in order to survive.
Book Details
Title: Protecting Providence
Author: James Leach
Genre: Historical Drama / Survival / True Story
Based On: The true account of Jonathan Dickinson
Setting: Jamaica / Florida Atlantic Coast / Saint Augustine
Timeline: 1696–1697
Format: Novel
Status: Coming Soon
Available: Coming Soon
About the Author
James “JC” Leach, USAF (Ret.) is a U.S. Air Force military veteran, technical writer, instructional designer, and screenwriter whose work blends operational realism, geopolitical tension, and deeply human stakes.
With more than two decades of experience across military aviation, electronic warfare, technical documentation, intelligence-related training, and instructional design, JC brings a combination of field knowledge and narrative discipline to his fiction. His U.S. Air Force career included electronic warfare and airborne systems, thousands of flight hours, and extensive experience working within complex military and aerospace environments.
After years developing screenplays, James brought that same cinematic instinct to long-form fiction, combining visual storytelling, technical authenticity, and character-driven suspense.
JAMES LEACH Author • Screenwriter 