Sunshine State

Starred review from November 28, 2016
Brave, keenly observational, and humanitarian, Gerard’s (Binary Star) collection of essays illuminates the stark realities of Florida’s Gulf Coast. With a mixture of investigative journalism and firsthand experience, she brings to life outspoken zealots, hopeless romantics, and escapist youth. She describes the hunger of Christian Scientists for earthly and spiritual wellness, Amway members for self-determined success, adolescents for reckless euphoria, testosterone-flooded males for dominance, and the underprivileged for nothing more than adequate housing and shelter. Gerard is a virtuoso of language, which in her hands is precise, unlabored, and quietly wrought with emotion. As evinced by the extensive bibliography and endnotes, she is also a very diligent journalist. To some, her thorough analyses of flawed legislation, business, religion, and literary journalism may feel long-winded at times, but readers interested in those topics will be fascinated. The chapters that will reach any reader are her deeply sad yet valiant personal essays on youth and death. Gerard’s collection leaves an indelible impression. Fans of literary nonfiction and dark reverie will welcome it.

February 15, 2017
Decidedly odd characters emerge in eight autobiographical essays.Combining journalism and memoir, Gerard (Binary Star, 2015, etc.), a novelist, essayist, and columnist for the online journal Hazlitt, brings a sharp eye to recollections of growing up on Florida's Gulf Coast. Notable for sharply drawn portraits, her essays depict a host of unusual, eccentric men and women. In "Mother-Father God," the author introduces the earnest spiritual leader of the Unity-Clearwater congregation, a New Thought church, where, for more than a decade, her parents were devoted members. Church activities were omnipresent in her life, leading her to wonder, as an adult, why her parents joined, why they left, and how that early connection to the church shaped her. Gerard juxtaposes her parents' biographies with a history of the New Thought movement, particularly Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, that arose in late-19th-century America. Like those early followers, the author's parents found in Unity-Clearwater "positive, reaffirming messages," especially the message that "people are not punished for their sins but punished by their sins." Gerard admits that she has been drawn to the church's teaching that individuals create potential in the world by first believing in it. Maybe this ongoing belief in potential attracted her parents to become distributors for Amway, a sketchy marketing corporation accused of being a pyramid scheme. Their involvement, no less enthusiastic than in the church, is the subject of the partly fictionalized essay "Going Diamond," featuring a portrait of Amway's co-founder Richard DeVos, whose son is the husband of the current nominee for Secretary of Education. Another essay details, somewhat repetitively, the author's high school years, marked by drugs, alcohol, sex, and, surprisingly, classical singing lessons. The title essay, although it also would have benefited from further editing, vividly portrays the bizarre director of the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, where Gerard visited as a child and returned as a volunteer to conduct research. "The Mayor of Williams Park" offers an engaging profile of an unlikely activist working to ameliorate homelessness. An intimate journey reveals a Florida few visitors would ever discover.

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March 15, 2017

Writer Gerard (Binary Star) was born and raised in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area, and as a teenager experimented in all the sex, drugs, techno, and nu metal music available in the mid-to-late 1980s and 1990s. These essays offer recollections of her escapades and renderings on homelessness and bird sanctuaries. "Mother-Father God" details her parents' involvement in the Unity Church and her mother's work with local police; "Going Diamond" describes her father's career with Amway and the company's philosophy to dream big, which Gerard acted upon during a recent visit to tour million dollar homes; "The Mayor of Williams Park" tells of the author's acquaintance with a person named G.W., who serves Saturday morning breakfast to the homeless in St. Petersburg. The titular "Sunshine State" outlines her volunteer work at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary and details efforts to save injured seabirds. While geographically focused on the west-central coast of Florida, Gerard's essays are not characteristic of the often-published writings on Florida as a touristy hiding place for misfits. The author genuinely writes for herself as much as for the discovery of the reader. VERDICT Writers and regional Florida readers will value this collection.--Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL

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