Anywhere Else: Essays on Florida

A memoir
of growing up in Florida interwoven with cultural reflections of the state from
The X-Files to Emerson--revealing the complex truths of life as a Floridian

Florida
and pop culture are a magnetic, viral match. From true crimes on social media
to spring break movies to Miami Vice, the state has been served up for
the rest of the world as a place of swamp things, serial killers, beach bums,
teen girls, and dead poets. In Anywhere Else, Rachel Knox weaves her own
story around the media caricatures, digging deeper into what it's like to be
from a "wild" place--and who gets to decide what that means.

Knox
writes from her own experiences of Florida as a child in Sunday school, a
student on field trips to Everglades National Park, and a bartender making
drinks for both out-of-state partiers and locals. She blends these memories
with critical looks at touchstones from different cultural moments, such as
Aileen Wuornos, America's most famous female serial killer; Florida's
Highwaymen artists and Thomas Kinkade, the much-beloved religious "Painter of
Light"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendentalist writer who spent time in St.
Augustine; the gloriously trashy 90s neo-noir Wild Things; and the
"Monster of the Week" episodes of The X-Files.

Writing with clarity and searing honesty about real issues refracted
through this prism of pop culture, Knox is both witty and vulnerable. In these
essays, whether she's bobbing in the warm waters of the Gulf or running through
the trailer parks of her childhood, Knox portrays a Floridian struggling with a deep, complicated love of her
home state. Anywhere Else is a book for anyone who resonates with the
message that home may not be a perfect place, but that it is worth fighting
for.