A Land Remembered: The Graphic Novel

Book excerpt: This graphic novel version of A Land Remembered, the bestselling novel by Patrick D. Smith, covers three generations of the MacIvey family in the Florida frontier from the 1850s to the 1960s. In A Land Remembered, Patrick Smith tells the story of 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 has been ranked #1 Best Florida Book eight times in annual polls conducted by Florida Monthly Magazine and is winner of the Florida Historical Society's Tebeau Prize as the Most Outstanding Florida Historical Novel."