Writer Cathy Salustri digs deep into Florida history

New York-born Cathy Salustri’s parents moved the family to Florida when she was 7. By the time she was a teenager, Salustri writes in her new book Florida Spectacular, “my destiny was set.”

That’s when she first dipped a toe into the natural springs of northern Florida, cold and clear and, to her young eyes, somewhat miraculous. Thus began a lifetime of curiosity about this most unusual, and most unusually beautiful, part of the country.

A longtime journalist, Salustri has written – and continues to write – about many subjects. But Florida, and its long and bumpy history, remain on the top shelf.

It’s a compulsion, she admits, maybe even an obsession. “If it were alcohol, or drugs, or cats, it would be called a mental illness.”

Florida Spectacular: Extraordinary Places and Exceptional Lives (University Press of Florida) follows 2016’s Backroads of Paradise: A Journey to Rediscover Old Florida, which chronicled a 5,000-mile road trip to research and report on the Floridian delights published in a 1930s travel guide.

For the most part, everything was still there.

Salustri’s wry, conversational writing style and eye for the odd detail, combined with the heart of an adventurer (and the curiosity of a journalist) made for engaging reading.

Salustri, wrote the New York Times, “delights in letting people know that to really discover Florida, you have to turn off the congested Interstates and explore the state’s towns and cities.”

The new book is similarly structured (albeit without a point-specific map); this time, it’s a series of insightful vignettes of fascinating facts and stories of the people, places and things that helped shaped the Sunshine State, both in the past and the present.

She “wants to spread the gospel of Florida,” Salustri insists, and make sure the world knows it’s not all South Beach, Disney World and questionable lawmaking practices.

“I get sick of hearing how awful we are, and ‘Florida Man’ … if it’s so awful, who do you all want to live here?” she says.

And she wants to clear up a few things about the state’s admittedly checkered historical past.

“The history is going to be the history,” says Salustri. “You’re going to have people writing their own versions, clearly – shout-out to Tallahassee and what they’re doing now – but I truly find it interesting. When you realize how xenophobic most of the world’s view of Florida is, you kind of want to fight back, on behalf of Florida.”

Similar to her similarly-named weekly podcast, Florida Spectacular explores the nooks and crannies of state history, its unsung heroes and their success stories.

Readers will be introduced to industrial pioneers Henry Flagler and Henry Plant, environmentalists Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Marjorie Harris Carr and, in a chapter subtitled The Most Spectacular Woman You’ve Never Heard Of, the Seminole Emateloye Estenketkete, aka Polly Parker, who survived capture and “relocation” by the American army during the Third Seminole War (in the 1850s), went on to escape and return home (in an arduous on-foot journey) and figuratively spawn a nation.

“I wanted to write a story about how spectacular the Seminole Tribe of Florida was,” Salustri confesses. “And what it’s meant to other tribes in the country. Because the Seminoles were the first to build casinos.

“And you may not like casinos, and that’s fine, but when you realize that’s building schools and offering clean water, you start to feel a little different about the blackjack table.

“So I’d wanted to write about how great the Seminole tribe is, but there were two problems: One, you can’t fit it into a chapter. And two, I’m not sure that a white person is the best person to tell that story.”

This evolved into a narrative about Emateloye. “It’s largely to her descendants’ credit that the Seminole Tribe is what it is today,” Salustri says. “And how did I get through a Masters degree in Florida Studies, and we read one tiny book about the Seminoles that doesn’t even mention her? It just bothers me.

“I want people to know these stories, because they’re good stories … I don’t think there’s anything in the book that isn’t life-affirming. And I don’t think you hear a lot about Florida, in the national space, that is life-affirming right now.”

Florida Spectacular also includes a riveting chronicle about the establishment of the 18 million acre Florida Wildlife Corridor, a network of public wilderness preserves and private working lands. “The Florida Wildlife Corridor,” she proclaims, “is a really fine example of what we can do on a bipartisan level when we stop thinking about how much we hate each other.”

Salustri is the owner, publisher and editor of the weekly Gulfport newspaper The Gabber. She and her husband Barry Loper bought the then-struggling hometown periodical (founded in 1968) during the pandemic.

The couple live in Gulfport; Salustri’s musings on city life can be found, among other things, on her website. 

Salustri is quick to credit her team of five, who put fresh content on the Gabber site, and on social media, virtually every day.

“Right now I’m still the Editor-in-Chief; by the end of the year, I fully expect I will not be. You can only do so many of the things you love at a certain time, and you risk not doing them well if you do that.”

Florida Spectacular: Extraordinary Places and Exceptional Lives took several years to get “over the finish line,” she says. “Writing is not what takes me time; it’s the editing. I hate editing myself.”

She repeats a famous quote that’s been attributed to everyone from Dorothy Parker to James Michener: “I hate writing but I love having written.”

Florida Spectacular: Extraordinary Places and Exceptional Lives on Amazon.