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The solitude and natural beauty of the keys have been inspirational for many artists and writers. Ernest Hemingway was a struggling author, who found solace in Key West in 1928.
While in Key West, Ernest penned the literary greats A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, The Green Hills of Africa, and a short story.
Jimmy Buffet rented a small apartment over a Key West restaurant, where he wrote his first hit song, Come Monday, with the noise and constant smell of fried onion rings wafting up from below.
The Niedhauk family naively sought their fortune by agreeing to manage a key lime grove on a remote island east of Miami where they battled the elements, mosquitoes, wharf rats and near starvation before they were almost killed in the unnamed hurricane of 1935.
June Keith, left behind a lucrative journalism career, crushing mortgage and car payments. She moved to Key West in the ‘1980’s during the height of the Aids crisis, that claimed the lives of so many of her new found friends and wrote about her heart-wrenching experience.
Mel Fisher, spent 16 years searching for the Spanish galleon the Nuestra De Atoche that sank somewhere off the Florida Keys with a fabled 400 million dollars worth of gold and silver bars, religious relics and emeralds…
The Keys have a long and storied history. Be inspired by our recommended list of books and videos.
Key Largo the Movie
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
Atoche Quest For Treasure
– National Geographic
Bloodline
– Netflix Series
Charlotte’s Story: A Florida Keys Diary 1934 & 1935
by Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
by Les Standiford
A Salty Piece of Land
by Jimmy Buffett
A Pirate Looks at Fifty
by Jimmy Buffett
Seasons on the Flats: An Angler’s Year in the Florida Keys
by Bill Horn
Tourist Season
by Carl Hiaasen
Sick Puppy
by Carl Hiaasen
Postcards from Paradise: Romancing Key West
by June Keith
Tales from Margaritaville Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions
by Jimmy Buffett
The Old Man and The Sea
by Ernest Hemmingway
Hemingway’s Key West
by Stuart B McIver
Key West: History of an Island of Dreams
by Maureen Ogle
