A Florida Dance: Life Stories from the Sunshine State

by Doug Alderson

Award-winning author Doug Alderson illuminates Florida’s beauty, quirkiness, cultures, and challenges in these true first-person tales. They range from being the first White sixth grader in a previous all Black school in 1968 to helping to blow the whistle on an alarming proposal to develop Florida state parks with hotels and golf courses in 2024. In between, Alderson describes a harrowing alligator attack that occurred on a South Florida kayak trip, rescuing a stranded kayaker during a severe thunderstorm, and briefly living on one of Florida’s last hippie communes. Humor is sprinkled throughout the book such as stories about unsuccessful attempts to deal with pesky squirrels and encountering a doctor who misdiagnoses a poison ivy rash for scarlet fever.

These are tales to make you laugh, cry, and marvel at the rich depth of life and the Florida experience.

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 4, 2026

Reviews

[James Huffstodt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a traditional memoir but rather an episodic recollection of key or intersting events and people encountered by the author, Doug Alderson. He's lived a fascinating and unusual life as a conservation activist, author, defender of Native American culture, wildlife photographer, and magazine editor. Born in Chicago, he came to Florida as a middle-schooler and almost from the beginning chose the path less taken. Alderson is a prolific writer publishing more than a dozen books mostly centered on Florida's fascinating and diverse wildlife, Seminole history, kayaking, and the state's iconic river network. This latest volume is entertaining, well written, and frequently very funny. Alderson is a great story-teller as this latest book documents in spades. Some of the best segements are profiles of people he met along the way such as a former Boy Scout leader, Ben, who served as a role-model and inspiration. Decades later Alderson re-connected with Ben, now bent, confined to a wheelchair and battling mental decline. This is a moving and touching reflection on a man facing his final days. There is more, far more in this readible book. Something for everyone.