Florida

An Amazon Best Book of June 2018: Welcome to the captivating world of Lauren Groff’s Florida, where assumptions of sunshine state stories—smiling and sunburned children, relaxed parents, moments of unencumbered joy—are shattered and reassembled into a world of darkened forests, nighttime walks and ferocious storms. As Groff writes, Florida is “a damp, dense tangle. An Eden of dangerous things.” And, “Walk outside in Florida and a snake will be watching you.” There is a mythic quality to these eleven stories that explore the underbelly of life and the fury of nature. In spirit and in reality, mothers abandon their children, hurricanes and rainstorms ruin vacations--marooning children alone on islands--and as a reader you’re left to wonder if the destruction caused by humans is worse that the destruction caused by nature. Moody, rapturous and filled with crystalline prose, Florida is a menacing marvel of a collection. —Al Woodworth