Five Essential Books About Florida (If You’re a Canadian Writing a Novel About Orlando)

When I first stepped foot in Florida at the age of five, I had reason to believe I’d teleported. Only hours before, we’d left behind the towering snowbanks and biting, sub-zero temperatures of Toronto. Now, stepping out of Orlando Airport, we were met by a wall of soft humidity, by palm leaves waving lazily in a hairdryer wind. The short, dark days of Canadian winter were replaced by a world that was impossibly, dazzlingly bright, its lush landscape teeming with life. It was nothing short of a marvel, and it began a life-long affection for a place so different to my home.

I remember that first childhood trip in a series of deep, dream-like sense memories—lizards skittering across sweltering pavement, the pink spray of bougainvillea, a startlingly blue nighttime swimming pool casting its wiggling patterns on stucco. I’ve had the privilege of returning to Florida a dozen or so times throughout my life, each visit adding further images to the bank in my mind—light glinting on the water on either side of Seven Mile Bridge, goosebumps rising on my legs in an air-conditioned Walgreen’s, egrets stepping across bushes like cautious runway models. And always: the hot, sweet smell of nighttime humidity, the air so thick and so quiet you feel you’re suspended in a dream.

Setting a novel in Florida felt like a natural and inevitable choice for me, and an excellent excuse to mentally spend time in a place I’ve adored so much. My novel Palm Meridian is set near Orlando, in 2067, when the Disney theme parks have long gone bust and climate change has lapped up the southernmost parts of the state. At Palm Meridian Retirement Resort—a haven for queer women and trans and non-binary people—life is still very much in full-swing, despite the lightly apocalyptic flavor of the second half of the twenty-first century. The story takes place over the final twenty-four hours of resident Hannah’s life, as she celebrates her end-of-life party with her two hundred closest friends, and hopes against hope for a reunion with her long-ago love, Sophie, before it’s too late.

The world of Palm Meridian rose up from those larger-than-life sense memories—kitschy pink motels, thickly knitted greenery, the mingled scent of sunscreen and chlorine. It’s maybe not surprising that the world of the resort is just a little bit surreal.

There is so much incredible Florida literature that has helped shape my knowledge and experience of the state. Here are some of the books that have made their mark on me.

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Lauren Groff, Florida
(Riverhead)

Some books are books. Other books are places. More than any story collection I’ve read in my life, Lauren Groff’s Florida feels like tearing through the page and stepping into a fully realized portrait of the state, living and breathing and dangled with Spanish moss, as panthers pass through the shadows. In “The Midnight Zone,” a mother staying in a remote cabin with her two young boys falls from a stool and hits her head and finds herself traveling outside of her body, amongst the thick of the trees. In “Eyewall,” a woman hunkers down as a hurricane slams her home, and when the storm passes, a miracle is revealed: a single, intact chicken egg sits, gleaming, where the front steps had been.

These stories are rich, at times hallucinogenic, and unforgettable.

Kristen Arnett, With Teeth
(Riverhead)

The aptly named With Teeth came recommended to me by a number of friends and fellow writers who rightly classed Kristen Arnett as essential queer Floridian reading, and I’m so thankful for my introduction to her. Told from the perspective of Sammie, whose claustrophobic marriage is mirrored by the stifling Florida humidity, this book does what it promises: its sinks its teeth into your skin.

Following two women raising their difficult son, this story rubs against the grain on every page and compels you to keep reading. In a series of events that gets messier and messier, the plot never shies away from a single thing, even when it’s hard to swallow—like the breakdown of a marriage, and the limits of motherly love.

A particular highlight for me was the smartly placed and often tender interjections from the point of view of passing characters, hinting at the unreliability (and ultimate humanity) of Sammie.

Dantiel W. Moniz, Milk Blood Heat
(Grove Press)

Each of the stories in Dantiel W. Moniz’s collection are the type you experience twice. First, you inhale the story (Moniz’s spellbinding prose doesn’t offer any slower option). Then, each story lingers within you, as your mind digests the inflection points, the double meanings, the emotional dynamics that Moniz has laid bare.

Set primarily in Jacksonville, Moniz’s stories trace the contours of her characters’ inner lives, including private pains and unspeakable secrets, showing us ordinary people with extraordinary things broiling just beneath the surface. Each protagonist grapples with something too dark and unwieldly for one person to carry—girlhood grief, the loss of a pregnancy, hate spun from faith, and a near-death experience, just to name a few. But Moniz’s characters find agency in the impossible—in “Tongues,” a young girl defies her community’s hypocrisy, and in “The Hearts of Our Enemies,” a mother delivers a delicious act of retribution. The collection’s title hints at the visceral stories within, and the prose delivers—as well as milk, blood and heat, this is a fully embodied world of sweat, tears, ocean water, and tiny, haunting limbs. As a reader, I let myself be swept away. As a writer, I was taking notes on Moniz’s endless skill.

Emily St. John Mandel, The Lola Quartet 
(Vintage)

I’m grateful to be following in the tradition of Canadian authors writing about Florida (though this book packs more crime story punch than my own!) Published in 2012, two years before Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel’s The Lola Quartet is the type of book you devour in one sitting. Following a group of four friends one decade after high school, it’s both at crime thriller with literary flair and a masterful character study, exploring four very different but intertwined lives and the ways that small decisions can create ripple effects across decades. In this book, Florida’s nature is a haunting, hunting thing—heat that suffocates, greenery that hides danger, and snakes that lie in wait in the water.

Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn Dixie
(Candlewick Press)

I’d be remiss to write a list of Florida books without Because of Winn-Dixie, which I first encountered, along with most Canadian kids, in my grade six classroom. I picked it off the book carousel, and read it at my desk as dust motes spun through a beam of sunshine, pretending in the warm glow that I was in Florida. At its best, reading as an adult recalls the feeling of reading when you were a kid—a sensation of being totally transported. And that’s what India Opal Buloni did, as she took us around her little summer world, exploring the contours of her loneliness, the complication of family, and the joy brought on by the discovery of a dog.

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Grace Flahive’s Palm Meridian is available now from Avid Reader Press.