The Florida I love is perishing, says Sudye Cauthen. In Southern Comforts, this fifth-generation Floridian blends memoir, oral history, and cultural geography to explore the tensions between community and environment in America today and her own ambivalence about Alachua, the place just north of Gainesville where she was born and reared. Cauthen raises a cry for all that is lost as Florida's―and America's―landscapes and traditions are replaced by interstates, condos, shopping malls, and the new way of life they represent.
Part self-reflection, part meditation, and part social analysis, Cauthen's work threads through the stories of blacks, whites, and Native Americans―men and women―including her own family members. Through their words and hers, Cauthen explores northern Florida's unique history, culture, and geography while she seeks a greater understanding of herself and her surroundings.
Cauthen's journey takes readers down dirt roads and city streets, to her people's tobacco fields and churches. She sifts sand at an archaeological dig for the lost Spanish mission of Santa Fe de Toloca, peers into an aboriginal grave, and everywhere marshals evidence for the primacy of place in determining who we are. One story takes us on a fox hunt; another reveals lingering racial problems. Permeating the book is the ever-present menace of growth and development and what it holds for Cauthen's Florida.

Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place

Biographies & Memoirs

Cauthen, Sudye

Community & Culture

Center for Amer Places Inc

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cauthen, Sudye. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cauthen, Sudye

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cauthen, Sudye. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place