by Anders Gyllenhaal

Miami Herald Executive Editor

This past year, staff writer Audra D.S. Burch has worked on breaking stories ranging from the earthquake in Haiti to the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. But in between these assignments, she's always in search of the complex, slow-moving stories far from the news spotlight.

The moment she heard about the tale of Rosewood, she knew she wanted to write about one of South Florida's best-known professors, Marvin Dunn, and his plans to explore a village that disappeared from central Florida in 1923.

``I love telling stories like these,'' she said. ``What I was trying to get at is this is really about the human condition -- our flaws and our triumphs.''

The Rosewood saga has a good measure of both. The history of the town, destroyed in a racial attack almost 90 years ago, was uncovered by the St. Petersburg Times in 1982 and then 60 Minutes shortly thereafter. The Legislature responded with reparations in the next decade, and the story was forgotten again.

But not by Marvin Dunn, who retired from FIU but has never slowed down.

His extraordinary plans include buying up land and literally digging into the earth to find out what happened. If he succeeds, a new chapter will be added to the Rosewood legacy. You'll want to spend time with this thoughtful, compelling story, which starts on today's front page.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/29/1795764/historians-quest-for-rosewood.html#ixzz0y0ZXVArh