"Part family memoir, part political commentary, part apologia, Dream State is all Floridian, telling the grand and sometimes crazy story of the twenty-seventh state through the eyes of one of its native daughters." "Journalist and NPR commentator Diane Roberts has many family secrets and she's ready to tell them. Like the time her cousin State Senator Luther Tucker wrapped his Caddy around a tree, allegedly with a jug of moonshine on the seat next to him. Or how cousin Susan Bradford was given an African girl for her eighth birthday. Or the time when cousin Enid Broward was made the May Queen of 1907, even though her daddy the governor shocked the state by trying to drain the entire Everglades. Roberts' ancestors helped settle Florida, kill off its pesky Indians, enslave some of its inhabitants, clear its forests, lay its train tracks, and pave its roads, all the time weaving themselves into the very fabric of this dangling chad of a state." "Roberts lays out the sweeping history of eight generations of Browards and Bradfords, Tuckers and Robertses, even as she Forrest Gumps them into situations with more historically familiar names. Whether it's the American court of Catherine de Medicis, the Tallahassee court of Katherine Harris, Henry Flagler's boardroom - not to mention his bedroom - or Jeb Bush's statehouse, you're likely to find a branch or a root of the Roberts family growing entangled nearby." "Starting in the recent past with the botched presidential election of 2000, Roberts introduces the many sides of the debate, coincidentally peopled with cousins both kissing and close. She then goes back to Florida's first inhabitants, showing how this alluring peninsula many called a paradise played a role in the destiny of those who settled there. Following their colorful progress up to the present, she renders them all with a deep, familial affection."--BOOK JACKET.