Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · coming-of-age

Janie Crawford tells the story of her three marriages and her long road to selfhood - from a West Florida childhood through twenty years as the mayor's wife in the all-Black town of Eatonville, to love at last with Tea Cake on the muck of the Everglades, where the great Okeechobee hurricane changes everything.

1. 1
   West Florida

   Janie's girlhood under Nanny's pear tree, and the loveless first marriage to Logan Killicks that Nanny arranges to keep her safe.

2. 2
   Green Cove Springs

   Where Janie, running off with the ambitious Joe Starks, marries him before they head south to the new town he has heard about.

3. 3
   Eatonville

   The all-Black town where Joe becomes mayor and Janie spends twenty stifled years behind the store counter, until his death frees her voice.

4. 4
   Jacksonville

   Where Janie, scandalizing the town, marries the young gambler Tea Cake, and learns to trust him after he vanishes with her hidden money and comes back.

5. 5
   The Muck

   The rich black earth of the Everglades by Lake Okeechobee, where Janie and Tea Cake pick beans and live full; the great 1928 hurricane, the flight through the flood, the mad dog bite, and the trial that follows all come here.

6. 6
   Eatonville

   Home again in overalls, Janie tells the whole story to her friend Pheoby from her back porch, a woman come back from burying the dead.