The most recommended books on the Everglades

Miami Herald columnist and author Marjory Stoneman Douglas can rightfully be described as the woman who saved the Everglades. The Everglades: River of Grass was published in 1947, the same year Everglades National Park opened. For over fifty years Douglas fought tirelessly against human encroachment on the Everglades and devoted nearly all her time to explain how vital it was to the entire state of Florida. In the 1960s (while in her late seventies) she became involved with the Audubon Society of Miami’s efforts to halt the building of an international airport in the Everglades. She also formed the Friends of the Everglades, an organization that is still today one of the most powerful voices for the area’s preservation. Proving that good people do not always die young, Marjory Stoneman Douglas passed away in 1998 at the age of 108.

Johnny Molloy is surely one of the most prolific outdoor authors ever, with 85 books to his credit so far. Most of those are regional guidebooks, but he has also written a few first-person narratives of his journeys.

This one describes his canoe and kayak trip down the Suwannee River and along Florida's southwest coast to the Everglades. His down-to-earth style really puts you there.

I met Johnny when he was writing a guidebook to Mississippi's hiking trails. After a riverbank lunch of sardines, crackers, and sweet tea, we fired up cigars and swapped yarns. He was just like he sounds in his books–humble and down-to-earth.  

Carl Hiaasen’s Florida-set books are dark, clever, and ever so funny, with his perfectly drawn characters being eccentric, shady as hell, or just plain whack-a-doodle.

Sometimes all three at the same time. Most of his books are standalones but his one recurring character, the sidekick to lots of the books’ protagonists, is Clinton Tyree, the ex-governor of Florida. Tyree was one of the few honest men to hold that office, until one day, sick of the corruption, he simply vanished into the Everglades.

He appeared later as Skink, a one-eyed man at one with nature who dined on roadkill and engaged in the occasional act of ecoterrorism. He’s frequently the protector of Florida’s downtrodden. In Stormy Weather, he befriends Bonnie Lamb, an unhappy honeymooner, and kidnaps her new husband. 

During research for my book, I visited manmade wetlands in south Florida, built to filter farm runoff from the water before it flows into Everglades National Park. These constructed wetlands are thick with alligators, spoonbills, storks, hawks, and other wildlife—but they’re just an echo of the surviving Glades. Now among the most cherished natural areas on Earth, in the settlement era the Everglades was written off as wasted space. Early in the 20th century the northern half of the Everglades was drained and turned into sugar fields. Today polluted runoff from those farms threatens the surviving remnants of the Everglades ecosystem. 

Grunwald’s book shows the human quirks and greed that drove the Everglades’ destruction, and that sometimes get in the way of its restoration.

In the 1990s, I was captivated by Peter Matthiessen’s three “Mr. Watson” novels, which explored the lawless world of Florida’s fin de siècle Ten Thousand Islands region.

Last year, I finally reread them in their final form, fused into the magnum opus Shadow Country. In telling the story of the murder of real-life Florida pioneer and renegade Edgar Watson from many different points of view, Matthiessen creates a richly textured landscape.

Outlaws, escapees, and adventurous settlers work, intermarry, and squabble, making a hardscrabble life among the swamps, the rivers, the mosquitos, and the gators.

Because…the ending is amazing! Well, not only the ending, but wow, the ending.

Many middle grade novels deal with loss and grief, but none better than this one, with a catharsis that’s totally organic and fully earned. Inspired by Miller’s experience of his own mother’s heart transplant, this coming-of-age story follows Graham in his quest to spot the Snail Kite, an elusive bird his ill mother has always wanted to see.

Family and friendship are at the heart of the story, but along the way, readers learn lots of tantalizing truths about birds, those symbols of hope and promise.  

I’m always impressed by how Karen Russell pulls the reader into her stories with no warning about what we’re getting into. No easing into strange situations. She places her characters in what we publicly claim can’t be real but privately know to be true.

To make a fabulist story work, images must cling to the reader’s mind like golden treacle. Each one either grounding us in the familiar or firmly establishing the unfamiliar as quotidian. Russel is a master at this. Her stories flow so easily, and her characters’ unforgettable voices hit the reader in the first paragraph.

Drawing on Fleming's experiences in Jamaica, MI6 intelligence officer Bond, James Bond, not only outwits the villain's attempt to turn him into shark and barracuda bait but also deploys a limpet mine to good effect in order to save himself and his female companion from death by coral reef dragging, a device I pay homage to in a later novel.

Fleming's Bond novels introduced the world to a clever hero required to take direct responsibility for stopping great evil. Bond doesn't shy away from brute force when required, but prefers more elegant solutions, inspiring later writers.

Like millions of others, the popular movies introduced his work to me, but Fleming was the early master of the art of an espionage/action thriller novel, inspiring many who followed.

What if a Florida farm town was overrun by anthropomorphic swamp monsters and the only people standing between them and the townspeople was an ancient legend with a rusty sword and a twelve-year-old boy?

Charlie Reynolds has two dads and both are good at football, but one was the reason his mom left Florida years ago and his step-dad is the reason they’re moving back. Now Charlie must prove himself to the new football team and grapple with his dad’s abandonment, all while escaping the weird creatures crawling out of the swamp. He struggles to know just what it means to be himself and to be brave at the same time.

I enjoyed this modern Beowulf retelling with its weird monsters, family drama, and incredibly high stakes. I could never anticipate what was going to happen next. 

John D. MacDonald is the father of modern fictional detectives—especially Robert Parker—who, like MacDonald, is a writer of sparse dialogue. John D. MacDonald’s main character is the unforgettable Travis McGee. Travis McGee lives on his houseboat, The Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game. McGee has no steady job. Instead, he takes on salvage jobs as he can find them and is paid 50% of the value of the recovered items he returns to the owner.  

Bright Orange for the Shroud—interestingly, is typical for John D. MacDonald as each of his books is connected to a color—The Deep Blue Goodbye, A Purple Place for Dying, and The Empty Copper Sea. 

While enjoying another short “retirement” Travis McGee is visited by Arthur Wilkinson, a friend from days gone by. In terrible health, McGee nurses him back to health only to find that Wilkinson has been bankrupted in… show more.