“Sunshine State embodies Florida’s unpredictability in the best sense. The essays are structurally intricate and ultraprecise in their depictions of both the physical and human worlds. Always intimate and never insular, they span a wide range of subjects—some trace the personal roots of family histories and youth and lost friendships, while others look outward to environmental conservation, religion, and homelessness … Why is Florida so fucked up? That’s a question I’ve heard, in one form or another, many times over. At least a partial answer can be located in the labyrinths of systemic dysfunction that Gerard describes, though of course broken systems are hardly unique to the Sunshine State. In this way, Florida is one of the most American states in the union … Sunshine State is utterly without sentiment or the Dave Barry wackiness so often ascribed to Florida. Instead Gerard pierces the sunshine and shows us the storm.”
–Laura van den Berg, BOMB, Spring 2017
