The Reader's Shelf: Getting To Know the Sunshine State

Edited by Nancy Pearl -- Library Journal, 2/15/2005

Florida takes pride in its sunshine, dazzling beaches, renowned theme parks, exotic flora and fauna, and limitless orange juice. But it is not a total paradise. The state has relatively poor public services owing to a regressive tax system, more than its share of destructive hurricanes, and an ugly history regarding race relations. Often works of the imagination provide more penetrating insights and deeper truths about a place than studies and guides. The following titles—first-class fiction by perceptive writers—reveal something worth knowing about the Sunshine State. [The fourth in an occasional series dealing with the literature of particular states.—Ed.]

Recently voted the state's "Best Book" by readers of Florida Monthly magazine, Patrick D. Smith's A LAND REMEMBERED (Pineapple. 1984. ISBN 0-910923-12-4. $18.95; pap. 1996. ISBN 1-56164-116-2. $12.95) follows the fortunes of three generations of the MacIvey family, a hardy lot who went from impoverished North Florida backwoods farmers in the 1850s to wealthy Miami developers a century later.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, THE YEARLING (Scribner. 2002. ISBN 0-7432-2525-2. pap. $14) introduced readers to an insular group of pioneer Floridians known as "Crackers." The story, which takes place in the 1880s in what today is the Ocala National Forest, chronicles a year in the hardscrabble life of the Baxter family. Most memorable is a heartbreaking incident involving 12-year-old Jody and his unruly pet fawn.

One of Florida's most intriguing real-life murder cases occurred in 1910 when an ornery, red-bearded man named Ed Watson was shot to death vigilante-style by his Everglades neighbors, who believed him to be a serial killer. Peter Matthiessen recounts Watson's life, death, and alleged crimes in three remarkable novels that combine historical fact and creative conjecture: KILLING MR. WATSON (Vintage. 1991. 1SBN 0-679-73405-8. pap. $14), LOST MAN'S RIVER (Vintage. 1998. ISBN 0-679-73564-X. pap. $15), and BONE BY BONE (Vintage. 2000. ISBN 0-375-70181-8. pap. $14).

First published in 1937, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (HarperCollins. 2000. ISBN 0-06-019949-0. $22; pap. HarperTrade. 1998. ISBN 0-06-093141-8. $13.95) is African American writer Zora Neale Hurston's most esteemed novel. It focuses on Janie Crawford, a beautiful thrice-married black woman seeking love and empowerment in the racist, sexist world of 1930s central Florida. Janie finally finds the right man in Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods, but a catastrophic hurricane sets off a series of fateful events that doom the couple.

Susan Carol McCarthy's superb first novel, LAY THAT TRUMPET IN OUR HANDS (Bantam. 2003. ISBN 0-553-38103-2. pap. $12.95), draws on her Florida childhood. Triggered by the racially charged murder of a black orange grove worker in 1951, the plot centers on a white family's determined stand against hatred and bigotry in a Ku Klux Klan–dominated community in central Florida. The narrator, young Reesa McMahon, exhibits a poignant blend of innocence, courage, fear, and maturity; cameo appearances by historical figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Harry T. Moore (Florida's first civil rights martyr) enhance the book's power.

John D. MacDonald, known for his Travis McGee mysteries, had an abiding interest in the clash between developers and environmentalists in Florida, a subject he explores with passion in his 1962 non-McGee novel, A FLASH OF GREEN (Ballantine. 1984. ISBN 0-449-12692-7. pap. $6.99). A coastal community near Sarasota becomes a battleground between those who want to fill in the town's beautiful bay to build upscale homes and those who are vehemently opposed to any such development. The book reads like a thriller, and its characters are entirely convincing.

Creepy Hillary Van Wetter is sentenced to die for the gruesome murder of a north Florida sheriff, but he is eventually set free on a legal technicality after two Miami journalists write a story that gets the case reopened. But what if the reporters' exculpatory evidence turns out to be untrue, bogus, fabricated? In THE PAPERBOY (Dell. 1996. ISBN 0-385-31572-4. pap. $19), Pete Dexter weaves an engrossing tale of redneck violence, perverted justice, and journalistic skullduggery.

Unquestionably Florida's most popular writer today, Carl Hiaasen has the enviable ability to deal with serious issues in an entertaining and inventive manner. In one of his best novels, NATIVE TONGUE (Warner Vision. 2004. ISBN 0-446-61320-7. pap. $7.99), the scheming owner of an ecologically challenged theme park in North Key Largo stirs up an array of activist opposition, including the author's greatest creation, recurring character Clinton Tyree, a.k.a. Skink, a half-insane former governor who lives in the woods in a junked car and eats road kill.