Sunshine State

“One of the themes of ‘Sunshine State,’ Sarah Gerard’s 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, "Unflinchingly candid memoir bolstered by thoughtfully researched history…. A nuanced and subtly intimate mosaic… her writing, lucid yet atmospheric, takes on a timeless ebb and flow.”   — Jason Heller, NPR.org "Stunning."   — “These large-hearted, meticulous essays offer an uncanny x-ray of our national psyche...  showing us both the grand beauty of our American dreams and the heartbreaking devastation they wreak.”  — Garth Greenwell, author of Sarah Gerard follows her breakout novel, , with the dynamic essay collection , which explores Florida as a microcosm of the most pressing economic and environmental perils haunting our society. In the collection’s title essay, Gerard volunteers at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, a world renowned bird refuge.  There she meets its founder, who once modeled with a pelican on his arm for a Dewar’s Scotch campaign but has since declined into a pit of fraud and madness. He becomes our embezzling protagonist whose tales about the birds he “rescues” never quite add up. Gerard’s personal stories are no less eerie or poignant: An essay that begins as a look at Gerard’s first relationship becomes a heart-wrenching exploration of acquaintance rape and consent. An account of intimate female friendship pivots midway through, morphing into a meditation on jealousy and class. With the personal insight of , the societal exposal of , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel , Sarah Gerard’s uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.