A sweeping story of Florida told through eight generations of family history
 
"With hurricane-force prose, journalist and Florida native Roberts hits the land of orange groves, theme parks and mobile homes with a torrential outpouring of love and hate, affection and disgust . . . If there ever was any doubt about the true nature of the Sunshine State—'where what people think happened is always more important than what really happened'—Roberts puts it to the test in this splendid unofficial history."—Publishers Weekly
 
Part family memoir, part political commentary, part apologia, Dream State tells the grand and sometimes crazy story of Florida through the eyes of one of its native daughters. Acclaimed journalist and NPR commentator Diane Roberts has many family secrets to tell as she reveals how her ancestors settled in Florida and wove themselves into the very fabric of the state.
 
With a storyteller's talent for setting great scenes, Roberts lays out the sweeping history of eight generations of Browards and Bradfords, Tuckers and Robertses. Continuing into the recent past with the botched presidential election of 2000, Roberts renders Florida's inhabitants with a deep, familial affection. While exposing the real people whom Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard fictionalized for years, Dream State ultimately reveals the cogs and wheels that make the state tick.
 
Diane Roberts, professor of English at Florida State University, is author of The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representations of Race and Region and Faulkner and Southern Womanhood.

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