New Novel Explores The Politics Of Rural Growth Fights

There has been some discussion in Tallahassee this year about a “rural renaissance” intended to bring prosperity and change to Florida’s rural counties if they are interested.
Bu there are always competing visions between the boomtown crowd and the traditionalists about what is really an improvement to rural life.
That drama plays out in a recently published book titled Sand River Reckoning by Bruce Kistler, a Winter Haven author.
It is set in a fictional Harken County somewhere in southwest Florida, where dark special interests are pushing to build a major highway across the rural landscape that would forever convert the county from pastoral paradise to more soulless sprawl.
The tale evokes memories of the fight over the toll roads proposed by the road-building and development lobbies several years ago or the current battle over a toll road through eastern Polk County based on the same kind of dubious rationalizations.
As characters in the narrative develop, we meet business leaders who only see easy money coming, ranchers who are either eager to sell out or resistant to losing their way of life, environmental activists trying to rally people they hardly know to oppose the project, local politicians who are split on the idea and a powerful development lobbyist who secretly hatched this plot, only to have a canoe trip change her perspective.
Without giving away too much of the plot, things change unexpectedly, and Harken County still thrives as a result.
But as the tale ends, new threats loom, demonstrating that the fights are never really over. That brings the reader back to the realism of Florida politics in what might otherwise seem to be a Pollyannish fable.
If you are looking for some summer reading about Florida culture, politics, public policy debates and more, this would be a great choice.
It is being self-published on Amazon.