Curated from the archives of FORUM, the award-winning magazine of Florida Humanities, this anthology presents 50 stories of life in Florida by some of the nation's most talented writers and scholars.-- Provided by publisher.

"Celebrating 50 years of Florida humanities"--Dust jacket. Includes index.

Introduction / Jacki Levine -- Part I. Beginnings. The first Floridians: They survived many millennia of a changing environment until disease and deadly conflict came from across the sea / Jerald T. Milanich -- Who started the myth of the Fountain of Youth? / J. Michael Francis -- The real first Thanksgiving / Michael Gannon -- Uncovering Fort Mose: in America's first free Black town, enslaved Africans found sanctuary and liberty / Kathleen Deagan -- He persisted: Francisco Menéndez escaped slavery, became a militia leader, and then did it all again / Darcie A. MacMahon -- How seashells saved St. Augustine / Michael Gannon -- On the backs of the enslaved: how Middle Florida and its planter class built wealth and power / Larry Eugene Rivers -- Florida gives its all to the Civil War / Robert A. Taylor -- . Part II. Florida Comes of Age: Promise and Paradox. The eye of the beholder: swampy hellhole or perfect paradise, travel writers have portrayed visions of vastly different Floridas / Casey Blanton -- Taking the waters: for Victorian-era visitors, Florida held the promise of miracle cures / Rick Kilby -- The Florida century: through boom and bust this outback became a megastate / Gary R. Mormino -- Along the backroads, 1930s: remembering when Zora and I chased the vanishing folklife of Florida / Stetson Kennedy -- Dear Honey: wartime life and letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / Betty Jean Steinshouer -- When the WACs came marching in: how Mary McLeod Bethune and the Women's Army Corps rescued struggling Daytona Beach / Gordon Patterson -- The mighty orange faces its uncertain future / Gary R. Mormino -- Recollections of a space traveler: former congressman and astronaut Bill Nelson shares the perils that lurked before, during, and after his historic mission / Interview with Bill Nelson by Rick Edmonds -- Memoirs of a child of the space program / Andrea Brunais -- Florida's fields of dreams: how sports have boosted our fortunes and, at times, healed our divides / Steven Noll -- The mouse that roared quietly: with secrecy worthy of a spy novel, Walt Disney set his sights on Orlando / Richard Foglesong -- How they see us: the small screen portrays a Florida you may not recognize / Eric Deggans -- Part III. All Things Unequal under the Sun. Parallel lives: growing up in Florida in the 1950s and '60s, two Floridians, one white and one Black, describe wildly different experiences -- Raised with love, schooled in cruel realities: in childhood, he learned the harsh lessons of Jim Crow and, finally, the power of being seen / Bill Maxwell -- A sheltered 1950s childhood, then an awakening: all this minister's daughter knew was segregation, but slowly her eyes opened to the damage and the loss / Beverly Coyle -- That summer of '64: Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for racial justice in St. Augustine / David R. Colburn -- Part IV. When a Deadly Pandemic Strikes. A Lesson in the pandemic: Teaching our young daughter to cope when Dad was on Covid's frontlines / Nila Do Simon -- Part V. We Were Strangers Here Ourselves. Finding Florida: Out of so many puzzle pieces, how can you create one state identity? / Stephen J. Whitfield -- We are here to rnlighten, not accuse: a Seminole historian urges accuracy as Florida commemorates the Spanish landing / Willie Johns -- Observations of a native son: former governor and US senator Bob Graham on the "Cincinnati Factor" and why Florida remains the "State of Imagination" / Ron Cunningham -- Adiós a los ninos: parents waved farewell in sadness and hope, as their children were secreted out of Castro's Cuba / Jon Wilson -- When life takes flight: thirty years after fleeing Cuba, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen made history in the US Congress / Dalia Colón -- Sweetness of memory: photographer Andy Sweet poignantly captured the waning days of South Beach's elderly Jewish community before his own life was cut short / Bill DeYoung -- What you see when you look at me: a Haitian immigrant meets her neighbors / Maude Heurtelou -- Part VI. This State of Inspiration. Finding a literary path home: learning to love Florida, through the writers who knew it first / Lauren Groff -- Many voices from afar: for 500 years, Florida's literary life has thrived on the state's complexity / Maurice J. O'Sullivan -- Echoes in the wind: in search of the poetry of Florida's Native people / Maurice J. O'Sullivan -- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Florida snowbird: winters in a Mandarin cabin transformed her writing and sparked a tourist boom / Michele Currie Navakas -- Lift every voice and sing: James Weldon Johnson's song for Jacksonville schoolchildren became an anthem for the ages / Craig Pittman -- Jack Kerouac's Florida farewell: he found a fertile place to work but no escape from his demons as his road reached its end / Thomas Hallock -- Muse over Miami: how a hopeless kid from New Jersey became South Florida's "Queen of Crime" / Edna Buchanan -- Once upon a time in Key West: writer Phil Caputo laments what's been lost and what still stirs his soul / Philip Caputo -- The Highwaymen: painting fast and selling their dreamy landscapes cheaply, these young Black artists created a lasting vision of a Florida Eden / Gary Monroe -- Singing the songs of Florida: a White Springs festival celebrates the elusive music that is Florida folk / Peter B. Gallagher -- The great state of rock: a star-studded group of Florida guitar masters electrified rock and roll / Bob Kealing -- Part VII. Roots and Rivers. The wondrous Gulf: how its bounty and its bluster have shaped the story of Florida / Jack E. Davis -- The tales they tell: fish camps preserve the soul of a vanishing way of life / Charlie Hailey -- The marvelous, misunderstood mullet: tracing the storied past of Florida's least respected and most important fish / Terry Tomalin -- Florida's deep-blue destiny: from the depths of a spring it is clear, we lose connection with the state's waterways at our peril / Bill Belleville -- Remembering Bill Belleville: his storytelling celebrates the mystery and glory of our state's waterways / Cynthia Barnett -- River of Grass: how a New England transplant came to champion and name an unloved but extraordinary wetland / Jack E. Davis -- Clyde's quest: neither snakes nor alligators nor giant mosquitoes can keep this photographer from his beloved Everglades / Jeff Klinkenberg -- And on to the sea: thinking of Uncle Cooter, on the banks of the river he gifted to me / Harry Crews.