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Praise for Florida Palms
New York Times Editors’ Choice pick
Optioned for a TV series by HBO
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book of 2025
The Poisoned Pen Book Club pick
Jordy’s Book Club Most Anticipated Summer Reads
New York Times Book Review, John Wray: “A musky, Florida-specific stew of sweat, blood, swamp gas and amphetamine addiction.”
Library Journal (starred review): “[This] intense drama has a Sons of Anarchy vibe but with a greater pathos. VERDICT: A must-read.”
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Oline Cogdill: “Award-winning poet Joe Pan confidently delivers an uncompromising look at the criminal underworld of Central Florida. Florida Palms ushers in a new talent.”
PBS, Between the Covers: “A very gritty book, very true to Florida. I think Joe Pan’s going to have a long career.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Joshua M. Patton: “While these characters seem to lead “small” lives, what they do has profound importance… Like The Sopranos, except instead of growing up at the center of this underworld, the characters strive for it from a place of near desperation.”
BookAnon: “Should be on the recommended lists for college level ENGL courses… Yes, at least as strong as Hinton’s famous masterpiece [The Outsiders]… Very Much Recommended.”
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The Outsiders meets Sons of Anarchy in this gripping debut about a group of young men dragged into a drug-running operation.
It’s 2009, the height of the Great Recession. Best friends Eddy and Cueball are fresh out of high school and wild at heart, but the economy is in the dumps. With jobs scarce along Florida’s Space Coast, they join a furniture moving company run by Cueball’s father, a gruff ex-con biker who’s supposedly retired from the fast life. But when a mysterious old boss arrives in town, the payload is switched out, and the young men are coerced into shipping a new designer drug up the East Coast.
What is advertised as a bastion of brotherhood and respect quickly spirals into back alley deals, bloodshed, and an all-out turf war that will test the bounds of love and friendship. Enticed by larger paychecks, and fueled by burgeoning drug habits, Eddy and Cueball find themselves trapped between rank opportunists, warring gangsters, meth zombies, crazed bikers, and a blowgun-wielding hitman, all vying for a shot of the Big Time.
Soaring, ambitious, and deeply humane, Florida Palms is a gritty coming-of-age story with enormous heart and an unflinching vision, where boys without heroes become men without dreams. In a relentless race against desperate circumstances, the young friends must fully embrace the crime life or abandon their loyalties and risk ending up face down in the muck of the unforgiving swamps.
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PRINT MEDIA
New York Times Editors’ Choice
The Brooklyn Rail, JC Hallman Interviews Joe Pan
storySouth: Everything Else Costs Money: In Conversation with Joe Pan
CrimeReads: Florida Man Writes Novel: Joe Pan on Philosopher-Bikers, Poetry, and Korean Horror Films
Flamingo: Florida Palms Author Joe Pan on the Space Coast, Biker Parties and Florida Man
Lit Hub, Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers
Writers Digest: A Single Novel Isn’t Meant To Encompass Everything
Crime Spree, The Heart of the Heart of the Why
International Thriller Writers: Florida Palms, a Debut Thriller
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TV
Great Day Live (CBS): Florida Palms: A Gritty Tale of Friendship and Survival
“Day to Day with Mariah” (CBS): Chatting with the Author Behind New Book ‘Florida Palms’
The Morning Blend (NBC): Debut Author Joe Pan’s New Book, Florida Palms
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RECORDED EVENTS
Skylight Books: Joe Pan in conversation with Tom Bissell
The Poisoned Pen: Joe Pan in conversation with Patrick Millikin
Brett’s Book Stacks: Behind the Stacks with Joe Pan
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MORE PRAISE
Publishers Weekly: “Gritty…The Space Coast atmosphere [is] pungent on the page.”
Kirkus Reviews: “Keep an eye on this author.”
“Thrilling, suspenseful, and intricately plotted, FLORIDA PALMS shines an unsparing light on the tenuous, violent lives of young men trying to survive in a world that does not want—or see—them.”
–Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine
“If Florida is purgatory with a sun, Florida Palms exposes what happens to the young men who grow up in the shadows—a tightly plotted page-turner filled with gangsters, brotherhood, and betrayal. Joe Pan is an extraordinarily skilled writer, but his genius is his empathy, understanding that good people sometimes do bad things. These are characters no reader will forget.”
–Alexander Boldizar, author of The Man Who Saw Seconds
“Florida Palms offers up a crew of freewheeling philosophers on bikes, whose cynicism and violence—and the bizarre, hilarious screeds by which they justify themselves—are counterbalanced by the naive, heartbreaking humanity of the young men swept along in their wake. Pan’s love for Florida and its rougher, neglected corners is evident and intoxicating.”
–Stephanie Soileau, author of Last One Out Shut Off the Lights
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