Miss Jenny And The Minnows — Patrick D. Smith

From the author of A Land Remembered...

There's a 20 year old mystery in the old southern town of Lofton that keep the men who hang out in front of of Joe's Bait Shop occupied. Every Friday afternoon at almost the same time of day, the elderly spinster, Jenny Lofton, known to the townfolk as Miss Jenny, journeys from her big Victorian house, Mason jar in hand and walks past the men into the bait shop with a singular mission. To purchase a single minnow. Then as quietly as she arrives, she heads back home always leaving the men scratching their heads. Why, the men ponder, does she buy only a single minnow and what does she do with it? Does she eat it? Put it in her fish pond in her yard? No, they've discovered that isn't the case. They all share the question, "What in tarnation does she do with it?"

Only Jenny knows...and soon the reader will be taken down the path of a lonely, old woman into a sinister secret. 

In a story that evokes the lurid appeal and somewhat Gothic atmosphere of William Faulkner's, A Rose For Emily, Patrick Smith weaves a tale of the sad, lonely world of a woman dealing with her genteel Southern society's rigid social constraints. Although inspired by his mentor and fellow Mississippian, this story is quintessential Patrick Smith. Those familiar with his acclaimed work of Florida historical fiction, A Land Remembered, will see the style and writing in this earlier work that would garner the awards and accolades that came later in his career.

About the Author:

Patrick Smith is a 1999 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, the highest and most prestigious cultural honor that can be bestowed upon an individual by the State of Florida.

In May 2002 Smith was the recipient of the Florida Historical Society s Fay Schweim Award as the Greatest Living Floridian. The one-time-only award was established to honor the one individual who has contributed the most to Florida in recent history. Smith was cited for the impact his novels have made on Floridians, both natives and newcomers to the state, and for the worldwide acclaim he has received.

Smith has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1973 for Forever Island, which was a 1974 selection of the Reader s Digest Condensed Book Club and has been published in 46 countries; in 1978 for Angel City, which was produced as a Movie of the Week for the CBS television network and has aired worldwide; and in 1984 for A Land Remembered, which was an Editors Choice selection of the New York Times Book Review.

In the 2002 The Best of Florida statewide poll taken by Florida Monthly magazine, A Land Remembered was ranked #1 Best Florida Book. The novel has ranked #1 in this poll every year since.

Smith's lifetime work was nominated for the 1985 Nobel Prize for Literature, and since then he has received five additional nominations.

In 1995 Patrick Smith was elected by The Southern Academy of Letters, Arts and Science for its highest literary award, The Order of the South. Previous recipients include Eudora Welty, James Dickey, and Reynolds Price.

In 1996 he was named a Florida Ambassador of the Arts, an honor given each year by the state of Florida to someone who has made significant contributions to Florida's cultural growth.

In 1999 Smith was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, which is the highest and most prestigious cultural honor the state bestows upon an individual artist. Prior inductees include writers Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ernest Hemingway.

In October 1990 he received the University of Mississippi s Distinguished Alumni Award and was inducted into the University s Alumni Hall of Fame. In 1997, the Florida Historical Society created a new annual award, the Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award, in his honor.