The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera traces the development of the Florida-Alabama coast as a tourist destination from the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was sparsely populated with "small fishing villages," through to the tragic and devastating BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.
Simply Seagrove tells the story of one family's discovery of a very special beach community and how Seagrove Beach became their second home. This informative but fun volume explores every facet of the Seagrove experience, reviewing the background of the area, the history that made it what it is today, and the things that make it unique.
About the Book: Seagrove is a small beach town located in northwest Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. Seagrove is also a state of mind. Postcards of Seagrove might best be described as a somewhat autographical, semi-fictitious history, but without a cohesive narrative. Hence, the notion that these are “postcards”. It is an attempt to capture the spirit of beach living, in and around Seagrove Beach in the “early days”, roughly the sixties, seventies, and eighties, but venturing into the near present. It is a combination of short vignettes, mostly two or three pages, describing bits of the lifestyle of a young man during this time period, and it tries to tiptoe between true history and the surrealistic thoughts of our young man, sometimes blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Although most of these postcards are settled in the warm, fuzzy decades of the past, some of them are only settled in the author’s mind, perhaps, also, warm and fuzzy.
About Garrett Horn: The author is a person who has traveled a lot. As the son of an Air Force officer, Garrett was able to live in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Germany by the time he was 10 years old. During that early period of his life, he was also able to visit Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Athens, Heidelberg, Paris, and Amsterdam. Most of his high school and college days were spent between Ft. Walton and Tallahassee in the Florida panhandle, but in reality, no matter where he lived, his heart was always in Seagrove. In 1983, while working as a journeyman carpenter, he had the privilege to join a small group of people, who were just beginning the construction of the town of Seaside. It was around this time that he began to write small descriptions of what he saw and felt, and as the years rolled on, these notebooks of paper gradually began to form the core of Postcards of Seagrove. Garrett continues his career in home building, being one of the many proud builders in this great community of craftsmen, dedicated to building some of the finest houses to be found anywhere. Somewhere, in the years that have transpired since those golden years, at the beginnings of Seaside, the author has assumed maturity, along with marriage, grown children, and even grandchildren. He still lives in Seagrove, with his wife, Nina, on the lakefront property that his father first discovered in 1959. Perhaps these changes, and his new outlook on life, will help create more postcards.
County Road 30-A, a coastline road in the Florida panhandle, meanders parallel to the most beautiful beach in the world. It is here, sociologist, Harley McBride, unexpectedly finds a gold coin washed up on the beach. Her quest to identify it leads her into a murky world where her longtime friends and members of the 30-A Supper Club protect deep family secrets dating back to the Civil War.
When Mathew Coulter seeks refuge in a small Florida beach town to escape his ruthless family who control the liquor trade in 1920's Atlanta, he meets a ten-year-old blind girl, Melanee Dalton, who will lead him on a journey that may be the final salvation for her wayward mother and Mathew's own haunted soul.
“The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you…”
Those simple lines from the Beatles’ ballad, “Dear Prudence,” are easily recognizable by anyone who lived through the 1960s, as well as by the millions of people who continue to enjoy the Beatles’ music today.
But who was Prudence? Did she ever come out into the sunshine and greet the new day, as John Lennon beseeched her to do? What’s the real story behind the song?
Prudence Farrow Bruns, a daughter of the prominent Farrow family that includes sister and actress Mia Farrow, finally sets the story straight. Her memoir speaks to her three-month self-imposed meditative seclusion in India in 1968, while also carefully examining the universal experience of the 1960s youth movement.
Farrow honestly and unflinchingly explores how music, drugs, the Vietnam War, and eastern mysticism and philosophy changed millions of young people’s worldviews during one of America’s most tumultuous decades. She also touches on her own famous family’s heartaches and triumphs, even as she voices the experiences of an entire generation through a single iconic song.