Brinkmanship

Abstract

Florida is so important to the United States that if you detached the state from the rest of America, the whole country would tilt back and sink into the Pacific Ocean. The Sunshine State is a peninsula, tenuously yet critically connected to its country. The fiction in this collection mirrors that relationship. These characters are tied to their families, their communities, their own identities by feeble but necessary threads. They exist in the pinewoods and scrub of North Florida, the prairies and swamps of Central Florida and the beaches and cities of South Florida. Like their home state, these characters struggle with their identities and how to maintain their individualities while still being a member of their communities. However, one of these stories is not set in Florida. It takes place in Georgia. But of course that's just as fitting. Florida always has room for non-natives.