Summer Reading Recommendations

Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators:
More Stories about Real Florida, by Jeff Klinkenberg

Reviewed by Suzanne Cooper, principal planner, Agency on Bay Management

I don't read the forewords and prefaces of books as a rule, but I think I'm going to start. I found myself really enjoying those in this book and they left me anxious to get into the "meat" of this latest Klinkenberg gift to readers.

As in his last book, Seasons of Real Florida (2004), which I also reviewed for Bay Soundings, this one is filled with great stories drawn, in part, from his award-winning columns in the St. Petersburg Times. Thirty-nine stories are in this collection, separated into sections called My Florida, Florida Icons, Working Florida, Dangerous Florida, and Living and Dying. But don't let the section headings get in the way. Once you start reading you won't want to put down this book! Yes, the stories are short, which should enable you to stop and get your chores done, but each is so entertaining and thoughtful that you won't - you'll keep turning the pages and find yourself thoroughly engaged.

We've all heard about nearby landmarks like Giant's Camp, the sponge docks of Tarpon Springs, Ybor City, and Bok Tower, and about famous visitors or residents such as Babe Ruth, Ann Paul and Danilo Fernandez, Sr. But we have seldom heard about these places or people in quite the way Jeff Klinkenberg tells their story. He really loves his work, if you can call it that. I think it's really an obsession to recapture and memorialize the Florida he (and I) experienced growing up - simple, salty people who loved life and made every day interesting; places that make fond memories.

I encourage you to read Klinkenberg's books, and then to take a day trip to the Loop Road, Weeki Wachee Springs, Pass A Grille, Corkscrew Swamp, or the other special places he has written about. Seek out the locals' eateries, dusty souvenir shops and cheesy tourist attractions in small towns where you'll experience Florida like it was decades ago, and where it continues to be insulated from the 21st century.

The Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald

Reviewed by Victoria Parsons, editor, Bay Soundings

If you're looking for a great beach read, go back to the future and pick up one of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels.

A "knight in tarnished armor" who dominated the bestseller lists between 1964 and 1985, McGee is a timeless hero who never fails to entertain. His fans are legion, from Steven King, Dean Koontz and Robert B. Parker to Florida's current favorites Randy Wayne White and Carl Hiaasen.

First and foremost, MacDonald is an entertainer. As a salvage consultant who recovers lost items for half their value, McGee travels back roads and high roads across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean, most often in the company of a lonely lady who has been cheated out of something valuable.

But MacDonald also has a deeper side that strikes close to the heart of anyone who loves Florida and his commentary is particularly poignant because it shows how little we've learned over the past 25 years:

"Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him ’waterfront’ lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness."

Any of the Travis McGee tales are perfect beach reading, but wait until after hurricane season to read Condominium, MacDonald's story set in a retirement community on the fictional Fiddler Key (with a noted resemblance to Siesta Key.) Graphic descriptions of what happens when a hurricane hits an unprepared barrier island are likely to result in your spending the rest of the summer collecting batteries and canned food so you'll be more likely to survive if a storm comes ashore in Tampa Bay.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Reviewed by Nanette O'Hara, public outreach coordinator, Tampa Bay Estuary Program

The death of Hilola Bigtree, the matriarch of the Bigtree clan and the star of the family's "Swamplandia!" alligator theme park deep in the Everglades, sets her entire family on personal voyages of self-discovery in an attempt to cope with their grief.

Thus, an enchanting novel by talented young writer Karen Russell turns gracefully from a Hiassen-esque farce to a poignant coming-of-age tale, told primarily by the youngest of the Bigtrees, 13-year-old Ava.

Beset by debt, Ava's father, Chief Bigtree, departs on an extended trip to the mainland in search of financial redemption. The need was magnified by the opening of a competing attraction, World of Darkness, which transports visitors, figuratively and in no small measure, literally, to Hell. Ava's older brother, Kiwi, takes a job there to send money back home and complete his education at night school, while Ava's older sister Osceola disappears with her "boyfriend," the long-dead ghost of a "dredgeman" who once worked aboard one of the giant earth-chewing machines that drained the Glades.

Ava's mystical search for her sister and her determination to salvage the future of Swamplandia! make for an unforgettable story of love, loss and salvation. But just as moving is Russell's deft portrait of the Everglades itself. Swamplandia! is as much an ode to this rapidly disappearing ecosystem as it is to a disappearing way of life.