Exiles in Eden: Life Among the Ruins of Florida's Great Recession

by Paul Reyes

An on-the-ground, intimate tour of the human toll of the nation's foreclosure crisis While working with his father's small company that "trashes out"— enters and empties—foreclosed homes in Florida, Paul Reyes wrote Exiles in Eden , a hard-hitting, personal, and poetic portrayal of his own family and the people and communities affected by the foreclosure crisis. Grounded in Florida and Reyes family history, and with character-driven visits to the dark corners of this crisis—including with those who are calling for revolution—Reyes explores the human element of this frightening rattling of the American Dream. From examining the unique "ecosystems" of each failed mortgage to witnessing parts of abandoned Florida returning to its wild natural state, Reyes takes the reader far from the machinations of Wall Street to the sun-baked side streets where the true costs of this crisis can be seen. The result is an extraordinary book about the allure and dream of home—and a portrait of an America where the exiled insist on the right to their own America dreams, even as the terms are forcibly redrawn.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2010

About the author

Paul Reyes is the former editor at large of The Oxford American and currently is a contributing editor with Virginia Quarterly Review. While working with The OA, he both edited and contributed a wide range of articles, including profiles, criticism, and essays, and produced several multimedia features for its website. He began his career in journalism working as a freelance fact-checker for such magazines as Lingua Franca, Talk, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and GQ. In addition to The OA and VQR, his writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, Slate, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Details, Men’s Vogue, and Mississippi Review. In 2010 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Exiles in Eden: Life Among the Ruins of Florida’s Great Recession, is published by Henry Holt & Co.

Reviews

[Craig Pittman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific book that just missed earning five stars. It's got a great premise and starts off strong -- and finishes strong, too. Now about that mushy middle part, though...

Paul Reyes' father runs a trash-out crew in Tampa, tackling foreclosed and abandoned homes and cleaning out all the abandoned and smelly crap that's inside so they can be resold. Reyes, a writer, decides to come back to Tampa and join the crew for a while to write about the effects of the mortgage crisis by looking at who was evicted and what they left behind. While the other two guys on the trash-out crew haul out the garbage and try to avoid the snakes hiding in the refrigerator, Reyes is poring over old bills and children's drawings to piece together the life of those that fled. He tracks down a few of them and their conversations with him will break your heart.

Then, at the end of the book, Reyes decides to visit the lot that his parents bought when they were newlyweds in 1969. Turns out it's in a town where the subdivisions notorious for poor planning and deceptive sales. He hooks up with one of the old salesmen and hears all about what they did wrong. Then he drives out to see it -- a sandbox, he says, unlikely to ever be developed.

The problematic part of the book is the middle, where he follows the exploits of an activist in Miami who's helping people squat in foreclosed homes, figuring that an empty home is wasted when there are so many people in need. A chapter on this would have been sufficient, but Reyes spends faaaaaaaaaaaar more time with the guy than is necessary and it becomes repetitive.

In short, I'd recommend this book to anyone who's ever bought a house or a condo in Florida, or even thought about it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one when I didn't expect to. The title and description sounded a little interesting, but after all, a book about the housing crisis as it played out in South Florida? It helped that I had lived there and knew a little of the geography, but mainly it was the author. Paul Reyes told it in the first person, having worked for awhile clearing out stuff from houses that had been foreclosed on. Reyes is well published in other realms and is just a good story teller. He kept my attention throughout.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading once that the more specific you make a story, the more universal it becomes. And this was the author's biggest fault. He tried to cover too much, including the geography of Florida. I know the blurb states that this book is "part exposé and part meditation," but it felt like it meditated too much and did not expose enough. Maybe it was written much too close to the events? Knowing what we know now (2025) about the 2008 financial crisis, I really wonder what kind of book he would have written.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book about the mortgage crisis. I never even thought about the people whose job it is to clean out forclosed houses. I think it would be fascinating seeing what was left behind, but also icky and probably very gross. People leave behind some gross things sometimes, even when they are not mad about losing their houses.

It was so sad to read about the people who were obviously duped into signing mortgage papers that were not beneficial. I always hate to read/hear about people who are having their 7000 square foot mansion foreclosed on. I cannot find any emotion for them except spitting. Ok, spitting is not an emotion, but I just want to spit on them. Who in the hell needs a house that big? I'll tell you who! Poor people that have lots of kids! Not the richie riches who have one snotty kid and three nannies.

Speaking of nannies, if I had nannies and chefs and personal trainers and endless amounts of time to work out, I too could have looked model-esque 6 weeks after my baby was born. It just puts a bee in my bonnet when they show how celebrities lose their baby weight. I was not a coherent person for the first few months of Nora's life. Sleep deprivation was supreme. There is no way that I could have done pilates for 4 hours a day, aerobics for 3, and free weights for 2, then spend a few hours doing mommy-and-me yoga with a newborn. And yet Angelina, Christina, Heidi all make it seem to possible. Ok, thanks for letting me rant.

Back to foreclosures, this book was good. :)

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book five stars because it was intriguing enough that it kept me up half the night reading it. Paul Reyes has a very engaging writing style and he did a great job of contrasting the history of those who built Florida with the modern day human detritus destroying it. Once thriving happy neighborhoods are now ghetto slums, foreclosures left and right etc. Reyes seems to have more sympathy than necessary for some of the people, who just don't seem as if they ever should have had homeownership to begin with.
One thing he didn't get into was the law that created this whole mess...everyone likes to blame the banks for incompetent and overzealous lending, but the banks were responding to affirmative action laws that required them to make risky loans to fulfill diversity quotas to increase minority homeownership. These laws were lobbied for by the civil rights firm that Barack Obama belonged to prior to his Senate seat. Banks were promised bailouts if these risky clients defaulted. The goal was to artificially increase the percentage of minority homeownership regardless of cost. Another huge government failure.
But even without this info included, the book is excellent.

[Leslie Zampetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reyes' thoughtful examination of the mortgage/housing crisis in Florida certainly hit home. Exiles in Eden brings a unique perspective to the table as Reyes is a "trash-out" man working for his father's business in between writing gigs. The empathy he experiences while cleaning out foreclosed owners' homes leads him to try and understand how the current crisis came about, its place in Florida's boom-and-bust history, and what can be done for those affected by it. Not only does he speak with former owners but he also gives perspectives from a real estate agent, a developer, and an advocate trying to find a solution for the homeless.

Well-researched and well-told, Exiles in Eden should be read by everyone who's ever lived in Florida - or wants to.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was ok. The stories we're interesting-but nothing more. There didn't seem to be a common thread linking the stories together.

it's too bad, because living in South Florida, I have seen the unfinished subdivisions, and know many people affected by the crises, (e.g. more than a few people who could afford to make the payments on their homes-but because they we're so upside down chose not to), but the author seems to squander the opportunity to make a really great book, by simply stitching together various stories and making a good one. I did learn a lot about Leigh Acres, which was interesting, though.

[Raul Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

With prose that is frank, vivid and highly-original, Paul Reyes manages to give a soul to a soulless place in EXILES IN EDEN. Reyes' deftly uses his presence in the book to provide social observations while avoiding the omniscient third person moralizing of many books about social crises. In exploring the history of Tampa and Miami Beach, Reyes tracks the sordid hucksterism that is the social DNA of the current crisis. I found EXILES IN EDEN an eye-opening must-read about the creeping, social corrosion overtaking Florida and large parts of the nation.

[Desiree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book about the current housing crisis, told in story form by those who clean out homes after they have been foreclosed. Based in Florida in places that have been the hardest hit by declining home values. Tons of books have been written already on this subject, but most of them are technical and talk about the banking regulations, etc. This one is definitely different! I think it would appeal to people who usually tend to read fiction, even though it is a true story!

[Liz Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice mix of memoir and history, Reyes' book gives a more personal look at the mortgage loan crisis.

I only wished, as I was reading, that he'd started with the personal stories and moved toward the sweeping language at the end... it felt like he threw me straight into the big picture - triumph of nature over man, triumph of greed over humanity - without allowing me to come to those conclusions on my own, through evidence.

Also, what a weird way to end the book.

[Elise · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book would be rollicking good fun in a depressing, isn't-it-crazy-how-our-empire-is-crumbling sort of way. But it wasn't. It seemed more like a series of somewhat interesting articles on foreclosed homes mixed with not terribly interesting personal reminiscing.

[Teri Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look into the foreclosure crisis. It gets a bit slow towards the end when he writes about Lehigh Acres and his family's involvement in the land scams of the 1960's. That doesn't have much to do with the current mortgage crisis.

[Caro · Rating 3 out of 5]

The anecdotes about foreclosures and the people who work around and in the business are interesting enough, but the final chapters that relate the development of Lehigh Acres, Florida, are fascinating. Now I have to read the Orchid Thief to find out more.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Florida people should check this out - especially Clearwater & Tampa residents.