The Wit and Humor of Pioneer Florida

Mark Twain would have loved and envied this book with its early times lawyers judges sportsmen cowboys circuit riding preachers and backwoods characters. Like Mark Twain this elderly native Floridian and country lawyer builds his collection of stories into a saga. Courtrooms churches turpentine citrus and cattle are taken for granted as the rural Floridians chief concerns. Revival and court trials have much in common in mortal and immortal man at the bar of justice. From these often fierce and smoldering realities this old Florida cracker recoils into a humorous rendition sometimes macabre and playful. The southerner will understand all this --- the non-southerner will probably gasp on every page. From his recollections covering a period of more than eighty years the author tells about a part of Florida in which he was born and raised. No work of fiction no treatise on law and sociology has given so intimate a picture of rural life in the pioneer days of Florida. The third collection of stories in the book entitled Dave Newell --- The Huntinist and Fishinist Gentleman is worth the price of the book. Dave Newell was a well-known author artist hunter fishermen producer of outdoor sports television programs and former editor-in-chief of Field and Stream magazine. Dave Newell was claimed as Leesburg Floridas Number One Artist even when he was off chasing around the world in pursuit of panthers jaguars mountain lions tarpon or Canadian geese.