A Land Remembered
A multigenerational saga of a Florida frontier family spanning from the Civil War era to the 1960s, following the MacIveys as they work cattle across the wild, untouched state that Loopers pass through today.
Patrick D. Smith’s beloved Florida novel follows three generations of the MacIvey family from 1858 through 1968, as they carve a life out of the cypress swamps, sawgrass prairies, and coastal rivers of the Florida frontier. Tobias MacIvey arrives in Florida with almost nothing. His son Solomon prospers as the state begins to change. His grandson Zeb watches as the land his family helped build gets swallowed by development, orange groves, and tourist infrastructure.
What makes this novel remarkable is how faithfully it portrays the actual geography of Florida’s Gulf side – the Peace River country, the scrubland, the coastal marshes that bleed into the Gulf. The Florida that Smith describes is the same Florida that shaped the landscape Loopers cross today. When you pass through Tampa Bay, or anchor off Tarpon Springs, or run the Okeechobee Waterway, this book puts a history underneath the chart.
It has been a staple of Florida school curricula for decades and remains the state’s best-loved historical novel. Both a one-volume edition and a two-volume student edition are in print. Most readers reach for the single volume.
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