P. Howell

The Wit and Humor of Pioneer Florida P. Howell

Mark Twain would have loved and envied this book with its early times lawyers, judges, sportsmen, cowboys, circuit riding preachers and backwoods characters. Like Mark Twain, this elderly native Floridian and country lawyer builds his collection of stories into a saga. Courtrooms, churches, turpentine, citrus and cattle are taken for granted as the rural Floridian's chief concerns. Revival and court trials have much in common in mortal and immortal man at the bar of justice. From these often fierce and smoldering realities, this old Florida cracker recoils into a humorous rendition, sometimes macabre and playful. The southerner will understand all this --- the non-southerner will probably gasp on every page. From his recollections, covering a period of more than eighty years, the author tells about a part of Florida in which he was born and raised. No work of fiction, no treatise on law and sociology, has given so intimate a picture of rural life in the pioneer days of Florida. The third collection of stories in the book, entitled "Dave Newell --- The Huntin'ist and Fishin'ist Gentleman" is worth the price of the book. Dave Newell was a well-known author, artist, hunter, fishermen, producer of outdoor sports television programs, and former editor-in-chief of Field and Stream magazine. Dave Newell was claimed as Leesburg, Florida's Number One Artist, even when he was off chasing around the world in pursuit of panthers, jaguars, mountain lions, tarpon, or Canadian geese.