A Delray Beach retirement community in 2018. (Photo by me.)

Florida! Beaches. Palm trees. Retired senior citizens. Disney World. Miami Vice. Kennedy Space Center/Cape Canaveral. Many nationally known pro and college teams in football and other sports. A once-blue but now-red state led by far-right/mean-spirited Governor Ron DeSantis. The home state of far-right/mean-spirited President Donald Trump, a New York native.

“The Sunshine State” has personal elements for me, too. After she retired, my New York-born/later-New Jersey-based mother lived in Delray Beach from the early 1990s to her death in 2018. My wife has extended family in Florida, where I also have friends. I covered conferences in Orlando, Sarasota, and Boca Raton when I was a magazine writer.

As you might expect, I’m also going to discuss Florida’s various literary connections. It’s one of the places where Ernest Hemingway lived — in Key West. The state is associated as well with novelists Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, columnists/authors Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, and other wordsmiths. And it’s the state where “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” is located — a theme park inspired, of course, by the blockbuster J.K. Rowling series.

I didn’t plan this, but the last two novels I read were set a little or mostly in Florida. First there was James Leo Herlihy’s Midnight Cowboy (known more for the iconic movie), a riveting book about a down-and-out Texas hustler in New York City who ends up taking a fraught bus ride to Miami. Then I proceeded to James Michener’s Recessional, which takes a poignant and very absorbing look at a senior facility near Tampa. It was Michener’s final novel — published when he was 87 — so the author really “lived” the subject matter.

Other novels with partial or mainly Florida settings? Referencing authors already mentioned in this post, there was Zora Neale Hurston’s compelling classic Their Eyes Were Watching God starring a memorable independent woman, Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Yearling featuring a boy and his fawn, and Ernest Hemingway’s fishing-boat saga To Have and Have Not.

I’ve read the columns of Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, and met and written about both men, but have not tried any of their books.

But I have read Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, in which the lesbian protagonist leaves Florida for more-tolerant New York City; Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, much of which is set at a problematic reform school in Florida; Joy Fielding’s Cul-de-sac, a page-turner about the families living on one suburban Florida street; John Grisham’s thriller Camino Island, in which manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald play a prominent role; and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, which — not surprisingly for a novel partly set in Florida — prominently features senior citizens in its cast.

Thoughts about and/or examples of this theme?

Misty the cat says: 🎵 “There’s something happening here/what it is ain’t exactly clear.” 🎵

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, with many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about awful massive layoffs in my school district, upcoming elections, and more — is here.