Sense Of Place

From Mark Johnson:

I've been rereading Angels & Demons by Tom French. I know many gangreyers are familiar with the story, maybe the finest newspaper narrative ever. I was stopped cold by this paragraph near the beginning. I've never lived in Florida but I wondered if there has ever been a better summary of the state than this single paragraph:

"Even then, they were not merely crossing state lines. They were slipping over to the other side, entering the isle of eternal youth, dominion of the sun, temple of the mouse who devoured the world, paradise of glistening beaches and murmuring waves and hallucinatory sunsets and oranges dripping with ambrosia and alligators smiling jagged smiles and…