A Land Remembered

[8], 403, [9] pages. Map. Patrick Davis Smith (October 8, 1927 - January 26, 2014) was an American author. His work was nominated seven times for the Pulitzer Prize and five times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1999. Born in D'Lo, Mississippi, Smith graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1947. He continued his studies until 1959, when he completed his M.A. Smith worked in public affairs until 1962 and at the University of Mississippi until 1966, when he moved to Florida and took the position of Director of Public Relations at Brevard Community College, which became Eastern Florida State College in August 2013. Smith wrote his first novel, The River is Home, when he was 25. It is the story of the Skeeters, a poor family of "river rats" in Mississippi. His next novel was Forever Island, the story of an old Seminole struggling against the development of the land where he has lived his whole life. That was followed by Allapattah, another novel of the Seminole culture. Smith's next book, Angel City, is the story of a poor family's struggles after being ensnared in a migrant camp. In 1980, it was made into a CBS movie of the week, starring Ralph Waite and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Smith's best-known work is A Land Remembered, a multi-generational novel of a family's struggles from pioneers to wealthy tycoons. A Land Remembered has been ranked #1 Best Florida Book eight times in annual polls conducted by Florida Monthly Magazine. In this best-selling novel, Patrick Smith tells the story of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family who battle the hardships of the frontier to rise from a dirt-poor Cracker life to the wealth and standing of real estate tycoons. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias MacIvey arrives in the Florida wilderness to start a new life with his wife and infant son, and ends two generations later in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that the land has been exploited far beyond human need. The sweeping story that emerges is a rich, rugged Florida history featuring a memorable cast of crusty, indomitable Crackers battling wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the swamp. But their most formidable adversary turns out to be greed, including finally their own. Love and tenderness are here too: the hopes and passions of each new generation, friendships with the persecuted blacks and Indians, and respect for the land and its wildlife. A Land Remembered was winner of the Florida Historical Society's Tebeau Prize as the Most Outstanding Florida Historical Novel. It has been in print since 1984 and is available in trade paperback. A Land Remembered is a best-selling novel written by author Patrick D. Smith, and published in 1984 by Pineapple Press. It is historical fiction set mostly in pioneer or "cracker" Florida. The story covers over a century of Florida history from 1858 to 1968. A Land Remembered focuses on the fictional story of the MacIveys, who migrated from Georgia into Florida in the mid-19th century. After settling, this family struggles to survive in the harsh environment. First they scratch a living from the land and then learn to round up wild cattle and drive them to Punta Rassa to ship to Cuba. Over three generations, they amass more holdings and money, and move further from their connection to the native, untamed land. In the beginning of the novel, Tobias MacIvey move from his home in Georgia down to Florida. He became rich from cattle herding with his family and later an orange grove. He gets malaria from an attack of several hundred thousand mosquitos, but was healed (temporarily) by Miami Billie, an Indian medicine man. Tobias died near the end of the portion of the book in which his son, Zech is the main character when he became too weak to fight his malaria from the cold. He died trying to save their orange trees from a freeze. Tobias is kn.…