Hands down a 5-star book for me. My only tiny quibble is that I get exasperated when there aren't chapters, or at least page-breaks that make me slow down. (But maybe that quibble is with myself rather than with the novel.) ( )

This is a tale of a childhood in rural northern Florida. Although it's a novel, there are certainly autobiographical elements to it. It's set in the 1950s in Pinetta, FL -- a tiny town on the FL/GA border -- the town in which the author grew up. At the end of the book, Kincaid enumerates "the snapshots of memory" which she "offered" to Berry Jackson's story -- her father who served as principal of the one school in town, her small two-bedroom white house, the chinaberry tree in the backyard, their yellow cat, the omnispresence of snakes, the photos of her as a toddler running around ouside only in underpants.

Picture of "Where Berry Jackson lived, Pinetta, Florida": http://nancikincaid.com/gallery/

It's a novel of wonderfully developed characters and the small town dynamic that thrives on gossip as bees do on honey. The town has its own social hierarchy and a rivalry between the Baptist and the Methodist church. Bored adults flirt with each other, passions flare, adolescents run away from home, families thrive and dissolve.

Again -- this novel is a picture of a particular place and time. But it is desire that drives the action. ( )

I enjoyed this first because it was such a great story and so well written. I also enjoyed it because I live near Pinetta and Madison and so it was like reading about home. I'm not sure about any quicksand near Pinetta, but she got the snakes right! ( )

great characters, love Berry, her family, her neighbors

Nanci Kincaid has created a small, southern town set in the 1950's that is so wonderfully vivid that one inhabits the space with Berry, her dissolving family and colorful neighbors. From the death tests her brothers devise for the numerous snakes (snakes resonate throughout the setting and the novel) to the relentless humid heat to the hurricane and its damp aftermath this book describes central Florida in a way more real than the Disneyworld dominated tourist destination of today.

Read it for the descriptions of the relationships, the poor white trash family outside of town, the rival churches, the chain gang come to rebuild after the hurricane, the bone-crushing poverty. Read it for the memorable descriptions of starting the car after the hurricane and the celebratory bonfire. Read it. ( )