Florida Novels

We have had a lot of conversations, and you have suggested some great books. Some are classics, and others are new to me. 

As of mid-August, here are your recomendations:

• A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith

• Alas Babylon by Pat Frank

• Birdsong Ascending by Sam Harrison

• Charlottes’s Story by Charlotte Arpin Niedauk

• Collecting Shadows by Gary Williams and Vicky Knerly

• Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

• Don Jaun McQueen by Eugenia Price

• Familiar Heat by Mary Hood

• Feast of Snakes

• Fever Beach by Carl Hiassen

• Last Train to Paradise by Les Sandiford

• Live from the Devil by Wyatt Blassingame

• Looking for the Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco

• Margaret’s Story by Eugenia Price

• Maria by Eugenia Price

• Mile Zero by Thomas Sanchez

• Ninety-Two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane

• Once a Runner by John L. Parker

• River of Lakes by Bill Belleville

• Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

• Sick Puppy by Carl Hiassen

• Stormy Weather by Carl Hiassen

• Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski

• Summer Lighting by Judith Richards

• Swamplandia by Karen Russell

• Tangerine by Edward Bloor

• The Brethren by John Grisham

• The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. McDonald

• The Nickel Boy by Colston Whitehead

• The Paperboy by Pete Dexter

• The Talking Earth by Jean Craighead George

• The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

• Totch, A Life in the Everglades by Loren G. "Totch" Brown

• Tourist Season by Carl Hiassen

• Undercover of Daylight by James W. Hall

• Walls of Blue Coquina by Sam Harrison

My goal is to have a list of ten Florida novels that captures the breadth of the Florida experience. These are the first two novels on the list:

A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith (1984) follows the MacKivey family over three generations. The Patriarch, Tobias, and his wife, Emma arrive in North Central Florida shortly before the Civil War. They scratch out a life in the Florida wilderness. Their son Zech, builds on this foundation and amasses great family wealth. Sol, the grandson, uses that wealth and thereby "effect[s] the final and irreversible transformation of a wilderness of wolves, panthers and wild parakeets to one of high-rise condominiums, drained swamps and polluted bays." (Malcolm Jones, "A Florida Saga," New York Times, January 6, 1985

The second book on the list is Their Eyes Were Watching God  by Zora Neale Hurston (1937). This is a love story about Janie Crawford's search for love as she "traips[e] through the Florida muck." Eva Dunbar describes Hurston's purpose. "Hurston’s work asks if it is possible to be a free, black woman and be in love? And if those two might be possible, how would that love look and what would one have to do to get it?"  (Eva Dunbar, "What I Learned About Love from Rereading 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,'" American Masters, June 8, 2017)