In this memoir, author Anne Hull paints an evocative picture of her childhood in central Florida -- one I found poignantly familiar to my own, despite growing up three decades later and about 100 miles east of her. The orange groves already giving way to new construction, the ever-present mosquitoes and heavy humidity, the surprise encounters with alligators who thankfully weren't feeling hungry enough to lunge right then… It's all rendered tangible again for me upon reading these pages, even though I haven't lived in the state for many years now myself. I'm even a bit nostalgic for the Publix chain of regional supermarkets and the faded highway signs she describes for Yeehaw Junction, a name none of my non-Floridian friends ever seem to believe is real.

Less successful for me is the larger thrust of the work. Is it specifically trying to recapture a bygone halcyon day, either for the writer or her setting? There's not much here to suggest how things have changed after the events described, and while the book concludes with the deaths of Hull's parents in her early adulthood, that isn't framed as particularly reorienting for her life. A minor theme throughout concerns her status as a rural tomboy, but she doesn't explicitly address her sexuality as a queer woman until the last 10% of this pretty slim title. And although we get a filtered child's view of adult mental health troubles (including both a neighborhood flasher and a terrifying sequence when her father takes out a loaded gun in front of her), that's not a topic that's brought into focus and explored at much length.

In the end, while I see much to connect with in the author's local experiences, I would not classify this as an exceptionally great example of its particular genre.

[Content warning for homophobia, racism, and alcohol abuse.]

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