The Way of Florida: A Novel - by Russell Persson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Relentless, urgent and above all musical, Russell Persson's expertly crafted The Way of Florida recasts the tragic story of the failed Narváez expedition.

This tale has trickled down through the centuries via La Relación, the official report published in 1542, as well as many other subsequent retellings. A calamitous attempt to establish Spanish colonies along the Gulf Coast, of the 300 crew sent inland to explore, only four survived this eight-year ordeal. In bracing, beautiful language this timely narrative of botched colonialism, now in its first American Edition, radically reimagines the parameters and responsibilities of the historical novel. Linguistically rich, sinuous, and maybe even heroic, The Way of Florida offers historical fiction like you have never read it before.

Review Quotes

"I'm not sure how a novel can feel ancient and entirely new at the same time. But in the hands of Russell Persson, The Way of Florida accomplishes this extraordinary feat with an artistry seldom seen in American fiction. This is a one-of-a-kind book by a writer whose sentences dazzle with their strange and haunting music." -- Robert Lopez

"Reading The Way of Florida, one can nearly hear the Earth turn. Persson's polyphonous prose's spare but startling effects are truly one of a kind; it's a metaphysical masterpiece in serial miniature, exquisitely carved from the very gruesome core of how we're here." -- Blake Butler

"Neil Armstrong hoped that someone, some day, would erase the footprints he had left on the moon. It is in this spirit that Russell Persson revisits the ill-fated Narváez expedition, covering the explorers' tracks before loosing his characters into lostness. With no backstory to speak of, or veritable narrative arc, The Way of Florida is a historical novel from which history has been all but excised, allowing a deep immersion in the here and now of lives conducted in extremis. Persson seems to have taken English back to the dawn of language, producing a newly-minted idiom that feels both antiquated and timeless. This outlandish debut is a singular masterpiece." -- Andrew Gallix

"Captivated by the author's trenchant, zigzagging, and reversing phrases, the reader finds themselves living the emotions of the men of a colonial expedition almost all of whom perish. There is grandeur in this tale." --Alphonso Lingis

"Dark, dark, dark, this incessantly numinous account of the funding of the planetary genius which, at any cost, the terrible genies of appropriation disport themselves on native soil, makes for an unprecedented work of language gorgeously twisted by the torsions of narrative necessity. It also makes for a great book. Entrancing in its choral pursuit of the realities of man's irresistible consumption of man, The Way of Florida rushes Russell Persson to the fore of notable American novelists, men and women who refuse the conventions handed them. Ah, good conscience tells me I might instead have simply - and thus more truly - said, 'I'm floored'." -- Gordon Lish

"The Way of Florida is, for the figures in the narrative, a doomed and reckless course. But for Russell Persson it is the manner by which he achieves absolute triumph. Here is a strange, bracing, wholly original novel, just when we need it." -- Sam Lipsyte

"Russell Persson does with Cabeza de Vaca's narrative what Nick Cave did with traditional murder ballads: hones it, gives it a sharp edge, and makes it seem almost uncomfortably close. An incantatory and compelling read, one that will stick with you long after the book is closed." -- Brian Evenson

"The Way of Florida is a brilliant take on the historical novel. The Narváez expedition continues to be a failed one, of course, but getting lost in Russell Persson's strange language feels like a beautiful and hallucinatory triumph." -- Michael Kimball

"Persson, God, where does one begin? There is a seriousness to the pages of Russell Persson that is rarely seen in this age of the instantaneous. Read Persson closely and you will see that he is extremely defiant. He is also extremely subtle in his defiance." -- David McLendon

"The Way of Florida is a compact, driving, rhythmical work . . . complex, rich, sinuous - a novel, but quite unlike most." -- Tom Jeffreys

"Russell Persson, in his debut novel, The Way of Florida, has transformed Cabeza de Vaca's book into a fictionalized chronicle that is far more immediate and despairingly poetic. Disorientation is the overwhelming feeling of this narrative, which follows Narváez's men who, having left behind their ships, wander uncomprehendingly through strange lands. Some of their exploits are astonishing." -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Russell Persson is a writer living in Reno, Nevada. The first American edition of his first novel, The Way of Florida, first published by Little Island Press in 2018, is forthcoming from Baobab Press in 2025. His second book, These Threads Who Lead to Bramble, will be published by Dzanc Books in 2025. His work has appeared in Unsaid Magazine, The Quarterly, 3AM Magazine, NY Tyrant, Hotel Magazine, Territory, and other literary journals.