I don't often get hooked on a book.

And I don't often get hooked on a book so bad I can't wait to get home to write a book review about it.

Full disclosure: I have a few hours left, but this book has been the best and most compelling book I have read since the first time I read The Old Man and the Sea.

A Land Remembered. It's soooooo friggin' good.

It's about a Georgia family MacIvey who leave Georgia to avoid the civil war and move to Central Florida (Okeechobee region). We were listening to the book as we drove through the area.

Having not gotten to the end, but I know where it is going: The family moves to Florida in the mid 1800's and start from scratch. Building lean-to's in the harsh Florida bush.

The story is how they started with nothing in the old Florida wild, and built an empire. The man, on his deathbed, regrets the transformation of Florida fro beautiful wild country to Miami / built-up modern degeneracy.

It's called "historical fiction" and it's beautiful. I have been punctually fact-checking the accuracy of things I have found too wild to believe - swarms of mosquitos so bad they kill live stock. And to my horror, it's 100% accurate.

The family moves tot he bush. The husband gets recruited to move cattle for war-time needs.

He learns the practice, and the builds his own cattle-herding team of rag-tag drunks and a black man (which also highlights racial issues of the time).

The story follows the generations of family, inter-racial relationships with a nativce woman... The mass development of Florida where cattle herding becomes impossible due to private land ownerhips, and the family evolves from cattle-herding to oranges.

The book celebrates everything that is good. Family, tolerance, justice, morality.

I don't much like the fact that the main character justifies his infidelity, but it's well explained in the book.

And we are going to get the point where the main character is going to realize that he destroyed the very nature upon which he build his wealth, and at the end of the day, he is going to have to live ands die with what he has done - not what he has acquired.

The history, the reality (through fiction). I can't wait to go for a jog so I can finish the book.

But it's magnificent.

A must-read (or listen).

Just make sure to get the adult version, because the kid version edited out the sex scenes and racial stuff. Flipping prudes. lol

That's it. I'm back home in the free State of Florida and I love it.

https://amzn.to/3Uc0Luv