Overview

"""We live so far in the backwoods, we have to pump sunshine through hollow logs,"" young Susanette's daddy says when asked where the Howell family lives. Their cracker house, which has never been slapped by a loaded paintbrush, sits on a small tobacco farm near the Suwannee River in North Florida, eighteen miles from the small town of Live Oak, a town that was at the turn of the nineteenth century the fifth largest town in Florida and the largest inland city in the state. The Howell's home has no indoor plumbing and no screens on windows to keep out gnats, flies, and mosquitoes. But the family is a proud bunch that make the best of the each situation as they struggle to improve their lot. Here, in the 1940s and 1950s, kids run barefoot, use their pennies to buy bubblegum off the rolling store and can't wait for cracklins on hog-killing day and polecat on cane-grinding day. Susanette and her older sisters attend a three-room county school for eight grades, when schools in the South are segregated and the Suwannee County school district bars country kids--white and black--from elementary schools in town. Susanette brings this time and place to life with humor and innocense as she struggles to understand her own embarrassing situations (which occur mostly at night) and overcome the apprehensiion she feels as her world begins to change. This family's frugality and can-do attitude and the community's coming together when the Suwannee River overflows its banks, destroying homes and crops, will amaze and warm the heart."

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Susie Baxter weaves a charming tale using threads of memories and front porch stories from her home near the Suwannee River in rural North Florida. Heartwarming, nostalgic, and honest. Pumping Sunshine is a joy to read. -- Cassie Dandridge Selleck, The Pecan Man A treasure. Touching, honest, brilliantly detailed. Pumping Sunshine leaves its mark indelibly on the heart. -- Jonellen Heckler, White Lies

Susie Baxter weaves a charming tale using threads of memories and front porch stories from her home near the Suwannee River in rural North Florida. Heartwarming, nostalgic, and honest. Pumping Sunshine is a joy to read. -- Cassie Dandridge Selleck, The Pecan Man A treasure. Touching, honest, brilliantly detailed. Pumping Sunshine leaves its mark indelibly on the heart. -- Jonellen Heckler, White Lies

Author Information

"Known as Susanette Howell during her childhood, Susie H. Baxter serves as nonfiction editor for Bacopa Literary Review and teaches memoir writing in the Enrich Program at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. During her career in medical publishing, she earned the ""Editor of the Year"" award given by the Times Mirror Company."

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