American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory

For Rymer (Genie), American Beach in northern Florida, the country's first black seaside resort, is a microcosm for the state of race relations in America. It's a weighty subject, which he examines through three stories, the most direct and powerful being the 1989 killing of a contentious but unarmed black motorist, Dennis Wilson, who was the fourth young African American male fatally shot by local law enforcement within five years. The second story focuses on MaVynee Betsch, a flamboyant opera singer turned penurious environmental activist, whose millionaire great-grandfather built American Beach; and the third story involves the late African American author Zora Neale Hurston, whose hometown of Eatonville, near Disney's planned community, Celebration, is, like American Beach, fighting to retain its cultural roots. Both the Betsch and Hurston narrative lines seem a little forced, functioning perhaps as pegs for Rymer's description of their respective struggling communities. These latter accounts can also meander, slipping into rhetoric and the occasional excessive gothic metaphor (""One had the impression that the sand walls of American Beach were like the murderous funnel of the doodle bug""). Still, Rymer has created a serious history of racial struggle that reveals the random murder of blacks by the KKK, shows how white development can destroy the character of black towns and inveighs against the corrosive effects of materialistic values on black identity and community spirit. Author tour. (Nov.) FYI: American Beach was the subject of 1997's An American Beach for African Americans, by Marsha Dean Phelts.