Cedar Key writer’s first novel dips into North Florida history

In her vivid first novel, “To not Preserve,” Cedar Key author Rebecca Johnston properties in on 5 Florida Cracker youngsters residing within the Suwannee River-Gulf space of Florida within the 1910s. Whereas their childhoods are wealthy with swimming and exploring wild creatures — the wars the boys go off to later carry no pleasure.

Will, whose twin brother is known as Mil, narrates the story in a Panhandle dialect. Will lies on his deathbed and declares to his niece listening to the story: “Anne, there are issues to be mounted which may’t be mounted, however I purpose to strive.” Historical past can heal, the phrases indicate. 

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On this historic novel, Johnston’s storytelling brings individuals collectively quite than utilizing the rugged particular person trope relating to life, turning the redneck meme on its head. 

On one journey, these curious youngsters use a hen as decoy and stab an alligator within the head. The swamp monster dies. However the gator proves too massive to stuff into any automotive. Will explains that the group “needed to minimize the factor up inta smaller items.” 

In the meantime, the group of 5 has tricked the sport warden by beginning a rumor about them stealing crabs from their neighborhood and the Cedar Keys about 20 miles southwest. 

And since “these have been hungry occasions” in rural Panhandle Florida, a town-wide gator prepare dinner off feeds residents that night time with meat to take house. “Nobody was talkin,’” Will says referring to the sport warden, “and the proof was all eaten or burned and buried.”

The children stay their fierce, joyous lives till World Battle I comes alongside. Like many, the boys consider it as “a grand journey.”

And their households? “Boy, have been our mamas proud.” When the boys enlist, the pastor calls them “emissaries of God.”

Simply earlier than they depart for conflict, Rosie and Ricky (one of many boys) get married as a result of Rosie has gotten pregnant.

Battle modifications every little thing. The boys discover that coaching camp is ill-prepared. Three of 4 goal follow rifles are wood toy weapons. 

Critical damage and loss of life come to the boys in France and Italy. When half of them return with mind, pores and skin and limb injury, the city whispers about all of them, the lifeless and the nonetheless residing, as in the event that they weren’t all heroes.

Life within the 1920’s proves troublesome for the remaining bunch within the swamps of northern Florida. Rosie runs a restaurant, and the boys who’ve returned with the monster of conflict on their backs have a troublesome time getting and conserving jobs. 

Horrifying Florida occasions happen, too, just like the Rosewood Bloodbath. And once more, the story shouldn’t be instructed from a “redneck” perspective. Will’s black buddy Josh, one other former soldier, almost will get killed within the hanging of black males within the city. Josh and Will stay good mates. 

Subsequent, an expertise of the Bonus Military in Washington, D.C., is jaw-dropping in its violence to and negligence of WW I troopers. These conflict veterans go to DC to attempt to get a Veterans Administration began. They’re chased away violently.

Sadly, as everyone knows, the following world conflict comes alongside. The remaining members of the little group head to Florida’s Southernmost Keys to work for the WPA. The previous troopers are boarded too close to the water. The infamous 1935 hurricane hits. Earnest Hemingway makes an look on this part, taking a number of the surviving former troopers below his wing. 

Although a lot haunts these Northwest Panhandlers, Johnston, the author, makes use of an sincere narrator in Will, who retains issues actual. He implores his niece, “I would like you to see how issues have been, even again earlier than your mama.”

Johnston is a Hemingway scholar and is engaged on her Ph.D. on the College of Exeter. She is an English professor at Sante Fe Faculty in Gainesville and lives in Cedar Key along with her husband and daughter.

Her analysis on the novel’s setting and period is woven inside the bushes, springs and native shade. Fiction readers in addition to historians and librarians will need this revolutionary e-book of their collections.

Mary Jane Ryals is a novelist and poet from Tallahassee who studied English/Artistic Writing within the PhD Program at Florida State College. Her novels embrace “Cookie and Me,” and “Slicing Free in Paradise” and she or he’s engaged on a 3rd novel set within the Cedar Key space.

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