Contents ( 66)
- Cover
- Books by Valerie Fraser Luesse
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Map of Florida
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- forty-nine
- fifty
- fifty-one
- Epilogue
- Keep Reading for a Preview of Valerie Luesse’s Next Book!
- Prologue
- one
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Back Ads
- Back Cover
Her whole family thought she was crazy for accepting a teaching job in rural Louisiana when there were, as her mother put it, “perfectly good schools from Mobile to the Tennessee line and enough eligible young men to marry every girl in ten states.” But Ellie was tired of living someplace where everybody thought they knew her inside and out, and she was weary of dating war vets who had gotten so homesick overseas that they never wanted to leave Alabama again. Most of them were ready to marry on the second date.
They had seen some horrible things, Ellie knew, and she was ashamed to admit, even to herself, that she was jealous of them. They had left as boys and come home as men. Ellie had gone from high school to college and back home again without feeling the least bit different. Teaching at the local high school had only made her more restless. Her mother insisted that Ellie “just needed a little change of scenery” and would “come home lickety-split” as soon as she got the wanderlust out of her system.
But Ellie knew that wasn’t true. She had not yet become who she was meant to be. She was sure of that. What she longed for was not change but transformation.
Acknowledgments
You never know where a story will come from. This one began in a conference room at Southern Living magazine, where my friend Holly Patterson Belk turned to me during a break from some meeting or other and said, “I’ve got a story to tell you.”
Holly’s original story about her father, Brigadier General Ben Lane Patterson Jr., contained all of these words: bourbon, Thoroughbred, asylum, bicycle, and fighter pilot—in that order. The part that sparked my imagination was something Holly knew only bits and pieces about: her father’s solitary bike ride from Waycross, Georgia, to Key West, Florida, when he was just fifteen. He did it on a bet, having endured a family tragedy and a painful breakup with his girlfriend, Bette. (Not to worry. Bette Young was the love of his life. He won her back and married her. Holly knew her as “Mom.”)
Peyton Cabot’s family is entirely fictional, but the central event in his story is based on General Patterson’s life. The bare facts are these: General Patterson really did ride his bike to Key West and back, sleeping in police and fire stations, thanks to a letter of introduction written by his hometown chief of police. He really did become locally famous as coastal newspapers covered his journey, and he did indeed take refuge at the Navy base on Key West after getting swarmed by mosquitoes. Like Peyton, General Patterson loved to fly, completing 101 missions as a US Air Force fighter pilot during the Korean War. (He was also the Georgia Bulldogs’ biggest fan, but that’s another story.) Everything else on Peyton’s journey came from the imaginative world inspired by my own travels in the Florida Keys and by General Patterson and his wife as I came to know them through photographs and wartime letters that Holly shared with me.