Usually my summer reading books are boring but this one ended up being pretty good. Throughout the book I got to see things from a different perspective, that yes developing can be good but it can also backfire, making people lose their jobs. ( )

I had forgotten how much we enjoyed this book, bought in 1985, as a beautiful re-binding of a paperback in a very long-established independent bookshop in Oviedo. A light-history, written as a novel but closely following the facts – there really was a celebrated character who had the job of walking the mail between Palm Beach and Miami, along the coast; as the interior of Florida was then impenetrable (and the beaches open and un-developed too. Sigh!)

Some of the adventures seem more like the old-fashioned ‘tall tales’ - but surely, crossing Florida swamps with their common population of snakes, bug and gators was hardly an every-day chore for the mailman. Incredibly it was a reliable service too.

Great reading, particularly if you live in the cracker-state itself, but sadly, impossible now to recreate the route.

Steven Pierton takes on the route of the Barefoot Mailman from Palm Beach to Miami. On his first trip he takes along a young boy, Adie, who turns out to be a young woman, Adela Titus, with whom he falls in love. The hurricane’s early winds blew away a wreck and blew in barrels of Spanish wine. “This was only the advance warning of the hurricane whose center was located somewhere far out over the ocean. Where this was, what exact direction it was taking, could only be conjectured. It might arrive tonight, tomorrow, or the next day in all its fury. It might veer off to remain at sea, pardoning the land and allow it peace again” (140). Steven got drunk during the salvaging of the wine barrels, and his friend Jesse, took over his route – birth, death, politics, revenge, and love ensue. ( )