Fiction Meets Real Life: Bertha Palmer Edition

This is a fiction-meets-real-life post. I read Jocelyn Green’s Veiled in Smoke back in 2020 and loved the novel.  One of its characters suffered from “soldier’s heart” – what we would call PTSD today. The author handled the situation with sensitivity and the book gave me the push I need to get professional counseling for my own PTSD. I’m still reaping the benefits of that counseling.

This novel also awakened my interest in Bertha Palmer, a side character in the novel, but a wealthy, widowed, businesswoman in real life. Her winter estate in Osprey, FL, sits about 45 minutes from my home and is now known as Historic Spanish Point. I’ve visited many times and I always love walking the grounds.

A year or more ago, I visited a Little Free Library and found the book, Suncoast Empire: Bertha Honore Palmer, Her Family, and the Rise of Sarasota by Frank A. Cassell. It sat in my TBR for months, but in December 2022, I finally cracked open its pages to find a fascinating read that illuminated my hometown's history.

And that's the story behind this book photo.

Read my review of Veiled in Smoke by Jocelyn Green.

Read my review of Suncoast Empire by Frank A. Cassell. 

Book Review: Suncoast Empire by Frank A. Cassell

About the Book:

Silver Medal Florida Book Awards Nonfiction

In the early 20th century, Bertha Palmer was one of the best-known and wealthiest women in America. She was an art collector, women's rights advocate, businesswoman, owner of Chicago's Palmer House Hotel, and had elegant homes in Chicago, Paris, and London.

In 1910 she traveled to the small and rough settlement called Sarasota on the west coast of Florida. For some reason, she decided to spend much of each year for the rest of her life on one of America's last frontiers, investing in cattle and farming, creating communities out of marshlands, pine forests, and tropical jungles. The society queen and social reform advocate excelled as a frontier entrepreneur, just as she had in every other endeavor in her life. She managed to make a good deal of money and to change Sarasota forever.

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My Thoughts:

I loved reading Suncoast Empire: Bertha Honore Palmer, Her Family, and the Rise of Sarasota by Frank A. Cassell. I have a substantial bias as I spent much of my childhood in Sarasota and still live near the beautiful city. Though I’ve been in the area all my life, I found much history that I never knew prior to reading Suncoast Empire.

Frank A. Cassell, author of Suncoast Empire, is a retired professor and the narrative demonstrates his skill in conveying detailed historical information while interesting the reader/audience. My favorite part of the book was the biography of Bertha Palmer. This portion occupied substantial page space but felt just right for the book – not too long, not too short.

Following the biography, Suncoast Empire focuses mainly on the last few years of Bertha’s life and explores how her presence and business affected the small community of 1910’s Sarasota. Given her age and the short years she had in Sarasota, her accomplishments amazed me. Over 100 years later, Sarasota is greatly changed from Bertha’s time, but her imprints are still here in the streets named after her family, the areas of the county that she labeled, and the reputation she promoted of Sarasota as a beautiful, tropical playground for the wealthy.