Florida: A Land Remembered

Forever Island is widely recognized as the classic novel of the Everglades. Allapattah is the story of a young Seminole in despair in the white man's world.

The River is Home, Smith's first novel, revolves around a Mississippi family's struggle to cope with changes in their rural environment. Angel City is the powerful and moving expose of migrant workers in Florida in the 1970s, which was made into a critically acclaimed film.

Patrick Smith wrote The Beginning in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. He offered an inside perspective on its effect on the people, both black and white, caught in the upheaval of the changing South.

-- The Adams Ranch began in 1937, when Alto Adams Sr. bought several hundred head of scrub cows native to Florida -- Today, Adams Ranch produces nearly 7,000 calves annually on 50,000 acres in Osceola, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie Counties -- The story of one cattle ranch as well as the story of one state, one way of life, and one family's stewardship -- Throughout, full-color photographs by Alto Adams Jr. punctuate descriptions of wildlife, terrain, and cattle -- Fluid shots of sandhill cranes and swallow-tailed kites in flight, an alligator showing her maternal instinct, a snowy egret's mating dance, an Osceola wild turkey roosting in a tree, and does with their fawns -- A beautiful coffee table book to add to your collection

In this best-selling novel, Patrick Smith tells the story of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family who battle the hardships of the frontier to rise from a dirt-poor Cracker life to the wealth and standing of real estate tycoons. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias MacIvey arrives in the Florida wilderness to start a new life with his wife and infant son, and ends two generations later in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that the land has been exploited far beyond human need. The sweeping story that emerges is a rich, rugged Florida history featuring a memorable cast of crusty, indomitable Crackers battling wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the swamp. But their most formidable adversary turns out to be greed, including finally their own. Love and tenderness are here too: the hopes and passions of each new generation, friendships with the persecuted blacks and Indians, and respect for the land and its wildlife. A Land Remembered was winner of the Florida Historical Society's Tebeau Prize as the Most Outstanding Florida Historical Novel. Now in its 14th hardcover printing, it has been in print since 1984 and is also available in trade paperback.

Learn about a "Florida Cracker" heritage upon which A Land Remembered is based. Find out how working in a migrant camp led to his novel Angel City. Visit the Seminole Indians who have a unique respect for nature.