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Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
A New York Times Critics’ Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A NYLON Best Nonfiction Book of the Year • A BuzzFeed Best Nonfiction Book of the Year • An Entropy Magazine Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year • A Brooklyn Rail Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year • A Baltimore Beat Best Book of the Year • A Paris Review Staff Pick • A Chicago Tribune Exciting Book for 2017 • A Rolling Stone Culture Index Recommendation • A BuzzFeed Most Exciting Book for 2017 • A The Millions Great 2017 Book Preview Pick • A Huffington Post 2017 Preview Pick • A NYLON Best 10 Books of the Month • A Lit Hub 15 Books to Read This Month A Poets & Writers New and Noteworthy Selection • A PW Top 10 Spring Pick in Essays & Literary Criticism • An Emma Straub Recommendation on PBS
“One of the themes of ‘Sunshine State,’ Sarah Gerard’s striking book of essays, is how Florida can unmoor you and make you reach for shoddy, off-the-shelf solutions to your psychic unease…. The first essay is a knockout, a lurid red heart wrapped in barbed wire…. This essay draws blood.”
— Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Stunning.”
“In Sunshine State, her penetrating and deeply felt debut collection of essays… Gerard strikes just the right balance between objective distance and glimpsed emotion…. Unflinchingly candid memoir bolstered by thoughtfully researched history…. A nuanced and subtly intimate mosaic… Gerard juggles nostalgia, criticism, romance and violence with pitch-perfect pathos…. Her writing, lucid yet atmospheric, takes on a timeless ebb and flow.”
— Jason Heller, NPR.org
“Perfectly captures the idiosyncrasies of the Gulf Coast… [filled with] tragic-comic characters who embody the state’s combination of beauty, sadness, hope, and greed.…. The collection is part reportage, part millennial love letter to lost youth, a native daughter’s attempt to sharpen her understanding of self against the whetstone of history and society…. What slowly emerges throughout the course of Gerard’s searching is a clear-eyed dismantling of the American dream: the idea that we are the individual architects of our fates, each with the power to will for ourselves the lives we want, the abundance we desire — wealth we trust will lead to true happiness.”
— Anya Ventura, LA Review of Books
“Sarah Gerard’s essay collection Sunshine State offers a deeply intimate look at Florida and Gerard’s personal experiences growing up along its Gulf Coast. Gerard’s writing is entertaining and engaging throughout, exploring topics like addiction, incarceration, homelessness, and religion while highlighting the environmental and economic struggles (and her personal ones, both emotional and physical) of living in the state.”
— Buzzfeed
“Sarah Gerard’s essay collection, Sunshine State, embodies Florida’s unpredictability in the best sense. The essays are structurally intricate and ultraprecise in their depictions of both the physical and human worlds. Always intimate and never insular, they span a wide range of subjects—some trace the personal roots of family histories and youth and lost friendships, while others look outward to environmental conservation, religion, and homelessness.”
— Laura van den Berg, BOMB
“Gerard’s prose is unlabored, flatly observational, and the interwoven mini stories are at once tender and cold, exhilarating and regrettable—each undermining the one that precedes it.”
— Nicole Rudick, Paris Review