Never give up~an old lesson.

I recently read a novel about a scrappy medical school graduate who solves a crime linked to her own violent past.  The title of the book is Toro, and the character's name is Allie Parsons. For the sake of transparency, let me disclose that my brother, Frank Schwalbe, wrote this book, but neither because of nor despite this relationship, Allie Parsons won my heart.

Allie is a former stripper and drug addict who survived a violent attack from a bull-like predator named Toro, but lost a child and an eye.  This event forced a reckoning through which she found a faith in God and a passion for medicine.  When the book begins, Allie has won a prize pathology residency in a Tampa morgue and is looking forward to a better life with her daughter, Chrystal. But strange episodes both inside and outside the morgue soon threaten the order and normalcy Allie has struggled to establish.  Chock-full of memorable characters, including sidekick Andrew Wong and the steadfast Pastor Virgil, Toro establishes Tampa, Florida, as a setting of mugginess, medicine, and mindfulness in the face of pure evil.

It is this mindfulness where Frank's book shines.  He told me he wrote this story for the nurses he works alongside every day.  Many are single mothers, and their determination and sheer energy to keep going in the face of incredible odds inspire him.  The character of Allie Parsons demonstrates this single-minded, eyes on the prize determination.  Never give up, our mother taught us, and Allie never does.  Toro took her eye, and when she cries, which is seldom, there's only one stream of tears~a poignant trait I can't seem to forget.  The source of Allie's strength is her faith in God, a subtle plot in the book which accurately reflects how religion in old Florida is as silently a part of you as your own eye.

Mom constantly encouraged Frank and me never to give up.  Sadly, one of the lessons I've learned as an adult is that sometimes it's okay, even advisable, to quit.  Our mother never agreed with this realization, and she would have wholeheartedly loved the character of Allie Parsons for her indomitable spirit. She would have been very proud of her son for writing such a good book which teaches a valuable lesson for those wise enough to perceive it.

April 1, 2015

A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith

I'm making progress through that luscious pile of books! Some are throwaways (meaning returns), some are Godiva for the mind (Cakewalk by Kate Moses), and some are pure vitamin-- books that give you something you didn't even know you needed. For me this week, that book was A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith. Published in 1984, this novel has quickly become a Florida classic, reprinted many times (by regional publisher Pineapple Press). I'll be honest, I never ever wanted to read this book, purposely staying away from it. It was on the shelf at my grandmother's house, on the shelf at my parents' house, even on my own shelf at one point. (I don't know how that happened.) Anyway, I had my reasons for shunning it. I've never been a fan of historical fiction, especially that of my home state. It seems like that bubblegum-flavored antibiotic medicine that we give children, sweet trickery to make them swallow down what's good for them. I don't know about you, but when I read, I don't necessarily want what's good for me. Yuck. But A Land Remembered was my friend's selection for a book club, so I held my nose and opened my mouth, er, eyes. And, glory be, it was delicious!

Now, I must tell you, my brother and I spent our childhoods looking at land. Most weekends, when we weren't visiting our grandmother in Okeechobee, we were on family trips to Live Oak, St. Augustine, Palatka, every small Florida town within a day's drive. My mother had a sort of land lust--she was determined to purchase an oak hammock or pine plot, anything that wasn't a sinkhole. Over the course of these many trips, I fell in a pond, got stuck by bayonet plants, sweated inordinate amounts of RC Cola, and generally was very miserable. I wanted to be at home, riding my bike or playing with Barbies. The only thing that made these pilgrimages at all palatable was taking a book along, which helped block out the reality quite well, except when I had to get out of the car and walk the property. We all had to accompany the realtor on this land survey. I begged to stay in the car, but no, mom was afraid someone would get me. So, instead, I trudged along behind them, dragging my feet, and a tick got me but good. It burrowed undiscovered into my head for a week, until, scratching along one day, I found it nestled there. But that's a story for another time. With these childhood memories long established, mellowing nicely, I had no desire to revisit the Florida landscape, unless it involved the beaches, palm trees, shells, and maybe a condo with a pool or two. And then I read Smith's book.

A Land Remembered tells the story of the MacIvey family, from their arrival in Florida during the Civil War to the late 1960s. (Smith ends it there, before the advent of Disney World and the accompanying Orlando boom, a good place to stop.) The family struggles in the Florida scrub to build a home, find food, simply to survive. What they eat is a revelation--poke salad, swamp cabbage (a.k.a. hearts of palm), coon, bread made from cattail-flour. I've read country hardship stories before--Tobacco Road, The Grapes of Wrath, the Little House books, but never have I been so enthralled. This book brought back to life some of my earliest Florida memories--I could picture and taste that food so well. Hearts of palm, with its crunchy asparagus tang, the bitter taste of turnip greens.

And reading the description of the land literally was like someone shaking me for my own good. I recognized the itch that scrub leaves on your legs when you pass through, the brown murk of the creeks hiding the pebbled alligators, the slick flatness of the grass a snake leaves behind. (Thank goodness, they always left! Snakebite is far worse than tickbite!) And the stories of the cattle...let me tell you, I once knew far more than I ever wanted to about cows. The MacIvey family makes their first fortune (after losing everything several times) by herding wild cattle to Punta Rassa every year. The family meets and befriends Indians, fights cattle rustlers, yields to mosquito swarms, and slowly grows rich off these cattle drives. Meanwhile, the state is changing. Henry Flagler takes his railway all the way to Key West, Palm Beach becomes the Southern Mecca, with Miami birthing its own breed of glamour just a few years behind. Florida evolves, and so do the MacIveys, and therein lies Smith's chief point: remember the land because it is almost gone.

To be honest, many people would not like this book. The dialogue sounds artificial at times, hokey even. The characters tend toward stereotypes, the escaped ex-slave Skillet, for instance. The females Emma and Glenda don't ring true at all--too good, too pure, martyrs of a sort. But, really, the MacIveys aren't the main characters--the land is. The beautiful state of Florida, the pure Florida of the mind, with its wide swaths of prairie and sinkhole bowls, the rivers, and everglades, and God bless it, even the scrub which scratches and cuts the legs of little girls.

Myra Sims by Janis Owens

It has been raining since Sunday; the ground is sodden and tree limbs are falling here in our verdant corner of Florida. It's a good time to take cover and settle in with a book if you can. Janis Owens' trilogy about the Catts family (My Brother Michael, Myra Sims, and The Schooling of Claybird Catts) is an engaging saga about a tenacious West Florida family. Owens brilliantly captures the hot and piney landscape of this part of the Sunshine State as well as the cracker mannerisms of its inhabitants. The title character, Myra Sims, is a survivor; she has endured much in her life--a rough childhood, mental illness, loss of a husband--and has emerged even stronger. Each book in this trilogy, though covering the same events, is narrated by a different character, and Myra Sims' voice is the best of the three. Her narration is so authentic in tone, I felt I knew this woman, and in fact, I've met many like her in real life--unpretentious, organized, resilient. But, in this case, as a reader, I also get to know the dark secrets of her past, the juicy details. Don't you just love reading?

I've slowed down a bit on the blog recently because I just finished writing a novel. Hallelujah! Who knows what happens from here. (Well, lots of editing, for sure.) I'm just glad to finish something I started. More on this later.