Some Came First

SOME CAME FIRST

 by WILLIAM WILLIAMSON 

is a gritty, coming-of-age novel set in the Florida Keys spanning the tumultuous sixties, the debauchery defining seventies decade as illicit smuggling and bacchanalian revelry renames the islands, Margaritaville, to the sobering early eighties when AIDS came aboard. Told through the maturing eyes of Conch born native, Henry Roberts, the azure coral reefs, tropical heat, colorful characters who are determined to keep their heads above water and unique history mapping the Keys, all come vividly alive.

If you enjoy reading contemporary South Florida fiction, SOME CAME FIRST will tantalize you with its decadent mixture of paradise and cultural charm that surrounds and defines the Keys to this day. Henry's intimate, revealing narrative of his family's life is an eye-opening, page-turning Keys experience.

Since returning from Vietnam an amputee, Henry's father, Jake, a self-proclaimed Hemingway have-not, is more at home drinking and carousing in the bars, trolling for paramours or away on the decks of fishing boats months at a time than being a faithful husband or father. Jake's drinking and infidelities keep Henry's family in perpetual limbo.

Love, paucity, tragedy and death, the chowder of life ingredients that has made the Keys a living, breathing one of a kind romance for writers, poets, artists and visitors for a century is splintering Henry's family apart while the Keys is also becoming over-developed and commercialized from tourism. The landscape of the only home Henry knows is changing forever, leaving him wrestling with his Conch heritage, questioning his place, sexuality, the meaning and essence of his family and life in the Keys.

Henry is discovering, like other Conch men born in the past, his reflection on the water might very well be a mirror image of those who came before him.