title: Sunshine State: Essays
author:  Sarah Gerard 
description: One of the themes of Sunshine State, Sarah Gerards striking book of essays, is how Florida can unmoor you and make you reach for shoddy, off-the-shelf solutions to your psychic unease. The first essay is a knockout, a lurid red heart wrapped in barbed wire.... This essay draws blood. (Dwight Garner, <i>New York Times</i>)<br /><br />Stunning. (<i>Rolling Stone</i>)<br /><br />These large-hearted, meticulous essays offer an uncanny x-ray of our national psyche, examining that American mess of saints and conmen, the peculiar, culpable innocence that American mess of saints and conmen, the peculiar, culpable innocence that confuses money and moral worth, charity and personal aggrandizement. Gerards prose is lacerating and compassionate at once, showing us both the grand beauty of our American dreams and the heartbreaking devastation they wreak. (Garth Greenwell, author of <i>What Belongs to You</i>)<br /><br />To read <em>Sunshine State</em> is to fall into something like a trance. Gerards writing transports completely, thanks both to the eerie, atmospheric prose itself and to her thorough investigative journalism; each essay carries the reader to a seemingly foreign world. There are cogent analyses of legislation, activists, and aesthetics, always grounded by Gerards connection to her subjects, always led by her distinct voice. In Gerards capable hands Florida becomes not so much a geographical state but a state of being, something which can leave an indelible mark on those who call it home. (<i>Buzzfeed</i>)<br /><br />Gerards prose is unlabored, flatly observational, and the interwoven mini stories are at once tender and cold, exhilarating and regrettableeach undermining the one that precedes it. (Nicole Rudick, <i>Paris Review</i>)<br /><br />Gerards writing has been described as unflinching, but perhaps the better terms are generous and patient. Her patience is what gets her close enough to her subjects that she can round them out, exhibit their complexities, and her generosity is what keeps her from mocking them. [The essays] work together to subvert the most common tropes about Floridas antic madness. Instead they focus on humanizing the states inhabitantsinhabitants with hopes and dreams, who cope with systemic and visceral issues who would ordinarily be flattened into condescending headlines. (Nick Moran, <i>The Millions</i>)<br /><br /><i>Sunshine State</i>, embodies Floridas unpredictability in the best sense. The essays are structurally intricate and ultraprecise in their depictions of both the physical and human worlds. Always intimate and never insular, they span a wide range of subjectssome trace the personal roots of family histories and youth and lost friendships, while others look outward to environmental conservation, religion, and homelessness. (Laura van den Berg, <i>BOMB</i>)<br /><br />The distinct nature of Florida and its undeniable, magnetic weirdness shines through somewhere in each essay. Yet, despite its title, that enigma of a state isnt the focus. Gerard takes a magnifying glass to powerful characters, herself included, and the underlying truths she unravels could apply to any number of Americans. The reader becomes invested in the characters lives, at times torn between empathy and disdain, but nonetheless needing to know what becomes of them. (Becca Godwin, <i>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</i>)<br /><br />Gerards native Florida links the assembled eight essays, but the setting is just that - a backdrop against which Gerard exercises an admirable impulse for experimentation. BFF is an extremely intimate autopsy of a childhood friendship. The Mayor of Williams Park is an immersive profile told in the quasi-detached first person, of G.W. Rolle, a minister who serves free weekend lunch meals. (Kate Bolick, <i>New York Times Book Review</i>)<br /><br />It takes someone with orange juice in their veins and alligators in their heart to truly bring the lessons of a place as complex as Florida to bear [<i>Sunshine State</i>] dissects what Florida means to the United States with a nuance and complexity only someone who has lived in itand, just as importantly, moved away from itcan provide. Listing the homes elevation, an accurate certificate is requisite to assessing the homes risk of flood damage or, in the case of Florida, its chances of surviving into the next few decades. Florida is the nations elevation certificate; consider Gerard our realtor. (B. David Zarley, <i>Paste</i>)
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  # Sunshine Bill
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### W H G Kingston
  
  
  This page formatted 2005 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  Chapter I.
  
  
  Chapter II.
  
  
  Chapter III.
  
  
  Chapter IV.
  
  
  Chapter V.
  
  
  Chapter VI.
  
  
  Chapter VII.
  
  
  Chapter VIII.
  
  
  Chapter IX.
  
  
  Chapter X.
  
  
  Chapter XI.
  
  
  Chapter XII.
  
  
  Chapter XIII.
  
  
  Chapter XIV.
  
  
  Chapter XV.
  
  
  Chapter XVI.
  
  
  Chapter XVII.
  
  
  Chapter XVIII.
  
  
  
  
  
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  Created from a nineteenth or early twentieth century text by
  
  
  Athelstane E-Texts
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Chapter I.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Sunshine Bill, according to the world's notion, was not “born with a
  
  
  silver spoon in his mouth;” but he had, which was far better, kind,
  
  
  honest parents. His mother kept an apple-stall at Portsmouth, and his
  
  
  father was part owner of a wherry; but even by their united efforts, in
  
  
  fine weather, they found it hard work to feed and clothe their numerous
  
  
  offspring.
  
  
    
  Sometimes Sunshine Bill's father was laid up with illness, and
  
  
  sometimes 