PRAISE FOR Wanda Duncan: "In Cracker Gothic, Wanda Duncan writes about the intersections between family and place with precision, wit, and loving detail. Capturing moments that are at times humorous and at other times heartbreaking, Duncan makes spending time in the Florida swamp an unexpected, lyrical pleasure." - Aimee Mepham, author of "Raving Ones"

I am a seventh-generation Florida Cracker, a product of Green Cove Springs, a small town in Florida that P.T. Barnum called "this salubrious and almost enchanted" place. "Salubrious" means health-giving, pleasant, delightful, and Green Cove Springs is all of those things. However, I must part ways with Mr. Barnum, and contend that the place is most certainly enchanted, with no "almost" about it. I ended the Cracker legacy of my family by moving out of state as a young woman. When my mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2008, I came back more frequently to be with and care for her. Three years later, my husband committed suicide. As a way to heal, I returned to my hometown for extended stays, and immersed myself in a life I had left decades ago. This memoir is my heart song, a tribute to the beautiful, quirky place from where I came, the place that embraced and sheltered me when I needed a safe haven for a while.

When her grandmother starts forgetting things, has to go into a nursing home and then dies, a young girl tries to remember the good times they had shared.

"Fourteen essays and articles and three short stories that will hit you right between the eyes. Crews writing is informed by a deep love of language, literature, nature, blood sports, and his own kind of people--namely rural, southern, hard-drinking, honest-measure hell-raisers. We are all lucky to have him to tell us about cockfighting, dogfighting, mending an injured hawk, becoming a great jockey, poaching gators, and taking ourselves much too seriously"--Chicago Tribune "The author's gifts include an elegant and easy style, a knack for telling a good story, and a wry and riotous sense of humor. . . . Unforgettable characters whose preoccupations evoke such memorable detail. Despite the concreteness of his descriptions, his sports cronies and the bar rats he encounters take on a universality in his graceful prose."--Newsday In this collection of fiction and essays, Crews focuses on the people and places of Florida--full of natural wonders and other, grimier delights that make perfect grist for his forceful style, Southern Gothic sensibilities, and rowdy sense of humor. From poaching gators, to the Gatornationals, to cockfighting--a must-have collection for Harry Crews fans new and old.

In this heartfelt tale about enduring hope amid the suffering of the Great Depression, Sean Dietrich—also known as Sean of the South—weaves together a tale featuring a cast of characters ranging from a child preacher, a teenage healer, and two migrant workers who give everything they have for their chosen family. When fifteen-year-old Marigold becomes pregnant during the Great Depression, she is rejected by her family and forced to fend for herself. She is arrested while trying to steal food and loses her baby in the forest, turning her whole world upside down. She’s even more distraught upon discovering she has an inexplicable power to heal, making her a sought-after local legend. Meanwhile, middle-aged migrant workers Vern and Paul discover a violet-eyed baby abandoned in the woods and take it upon themselves to care for her. The men continue their search for work and soon pair up with a poverty-stricken widow, plus her two children, and the misfit family begins taking care of each other. As survival brings this chosen family together, a young boy finds himself without a friend to his name as the dust storms rage across Kansas. Fourteen-year-old Coot, a child preacher, is on the run from his abusive tent-revival pastor father with thousands of stolen dollars—and the only thing he’s sure of is that Mobile, Alabama, is his destination. In a sweeping saga with a looming second world war, these stories intertwine in surprising ways, reminding us that when the dust clears, we can still see the stars. Stand-alone Southern historical fiction set during the Great Depression Book length: approximately 98,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by Sean Dietrich: The Incredible Winston Browne

Winner of the 1993 LoPresti Award for excellence in art publishing Cracker homes take the best advantage of the climate and terrain of Florida. This book provides a history of Florida wood-frame architecture, from the simplest "single-pen" homesteads to the latest homes at Seaside, and includes several floor plans for new adaptations of classic Cracker architecture. Learn about the double-pen house, the classic dogtrot, the four-square Georgian, the Cracker townhouse, and much more with this exploration of Florida's orginal architecture. Includes several floor plans for new adaptations of classic Cracker architecture.

Most of these yarns are just tales, written after time spent at forgotten places, inside the crumbling walls and fallen roofs of our past. Several are true, told to me through the memory of their family.Come with me on a journey that the pioneers would never think someone would write. Go back in time and visit what we have forgotten, the homesteads and back roads of the Florida Pioneer.