The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

by John Henry Fleming

A postmaster and a New York journalist embellish the experiences of the local immigrant mail carrier in order to create a tourist trade in a small post-Civil War Florida town

Genres: Fiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Lynette Lark · Rating 1 out of 5]

This imposter took a book by Theodore Pratt and made a travesty of it.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent sampling of authentic Florida folklore retold into a classic legend. I really enjoyed this story that brings to life a classic tale about a barefoot mailman through the story of an immigrant who tries and fails to reclaim some of the Old World through a fruit grove in the wilderness of Florida. He ends up agreeing to deliver mail on a treacherous route in his bare feet and suffers all the dangers Florida has from a Native tribe to beach scavengers and the usual wildlife. The novel is really about how such a story can take a life of its own and transform the lives of those who tell it.

My favorite excerpts:
"This was his destiny, it seemed, the destiny of the torchbearer, to keep the beacon of civilization glowing even in the remotest wilds. He was a link, as the postmaster had said, but more than just a link in the postal chain. He was the only link to civilization for an entire community of settlers who might otherwise be lost and forgotten, their bold experiment in hope and progress left unreported if not for him. This was the highest duty a man could aspire to, he thought."

"Yet this Eden would be arrived at through the efforts of man. It would be an exact, man-made replication of Paradise. The New Paradise. The entire history of man would then be seen as a reconstruction of this Edenic framework. It had all been a learning process for the recreation of a single, beautiful, and perfect expression of God. Only then would man truly know and understand something of His nature."

"Josef saw before him the world of the future, where whole communities rose up out of the Florida jungle, and men and women lived in great comfort and ease as never before, as carefree as lambs romping across the dunes, soothed by the voice of the sea, or perhaps strolling blissfully through the flat green fields they'd carved out of the once-forbidding wilderness. For Nature had been thoroughly tamed."

"It seemed that he was forever being punished, that he was forever sampling the forbidden fruit and being turned out of Eden just as he'd learned to enjoy its delights. It occurred to him that he might build and rebuild his paradise a million times and never recognize it as the one true Eden. Perhaps he was destined to forever look his beloved in the eye and never know her true identity."

"But another possibility presented itself to him. Perhaps he'd so confused himself that he'd regressed. Surely the Indian way to Paradise was the false way, the way of animals and heathens, for it wasn't a rebuilding of Paradise, but rather a return to the Paradise of old where humans and animals were alike in that they could know no shame. He'd given himself to that Indian woman as though he were little more than a beast with natural urges. In his weakness, perhaps he yearned for that lost innocence. He yearned to forget the taste of the fruit, and his scrambled thoughts did not recognize the impossibility of this."

[Vanessa Blakeslee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enchanting and laugh-out-laugh funny. If you're a fan of Fleming's SONGS FOR THE DEAF, I predict you'll love this book.

[Marybeth Cross]

Great fun to read with my sons. Has been a wonderful gift to give to young boys also. Yet, as an adult, I also enjoyed reading it. Cleverly written. Inspires conversation about the mysteries of Florida, the State in which we reside.

[Jeffrey Philips · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of south Florida history in this book, which I liked.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not capture my attention the way some books do.