In the early 1960s, Hall encountered Florida for the first time, spending several months going to high school in Hollywood.  The beauty of the landscape, the crystalline light, and the tall ungainly white birds made such a deep impression on him that he vowed to return to Florida and build his life there. 

After earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Hall applied for teaching jobs only in Florida.  Given the tight job market in the academic world at the time, it was a risky, if not downright crazy choice.  But he had decided he’d rather have any old job he could find in Florida than teach college anywhere else. 

He worked as a landscaper and in boatyards until he miraculously landed a teaching position in Miami.

While Hall knows he’ll never be considered “a native,” it is his perspective as an outsider that allows him to appreciate aspects of his adopted state that Florida natives sometimes take for granted.

Now, writing in the spirit of Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Hall wins a new kind of reader with this collection of essays that run from insightful to opinionated, funny to wise.

Hall ponders subjects as diverse as his own love affair with Florida which began as a teenager, to his equally passionate romance with books. He ponders the nature of summer heat, the writing of Hemingway and James Dickey, television, teaching, politics, fatherhood and much more. In the vibrant and elegant prose which characterize his fiction and poetry, Hall now proves himself a master of the essay as well.

James W. Hall is the critically acclaimed author of twenty-six crime novels, including Body Language and Blackwater Sound. He’s also published four books of poetry. And two collections of short stories.