The Books Briefing: How to Tell a Story About Florida
Examining some of Florida’s many narratives more carefully can lead to a richer understanding of the state, the country, and the nature of storytelling itself.
“Seek to encapsulate Florida in a single narrative, and you’ll find yourself thwarted,” Lauren Groff writes in a review of Kent Russell’s In the Land of Good Living. In the book, Russell and his friends walk from the northwest corner of Florida’s panhandle south to Miami’s Coconut Grove, learning the state’s lore and teasing apart “the accepted story of Florida” from “the actual—far darker—story.”
