Author and Musician Arthur Crummer

Arthur Crummer will entertain the audience when he discusses his new book, Floating Island, on Sunday September 30, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., at the Alachua County Library headquarters, meeting room A. He will read passages and poetry and perform songs written by characters in the new novel, a metafictional mystery set in an area similar to Paynes Prairie.

In Floating Island, Paul Bradley’s life is adrift. Disturbing rumors compel him to canoe onto his beloved Lake Lacuna. He capsizes near a floating island and sleeps free of mosquitoes under a layer of sand beside a misty Florida swamp. At dawn the island is gone.

Two weeks later his wife disappears. Blood-soaked parts of her shredded clothes float in Lacuna’s tannic, gator-infested waters. But things aren’t as they seem: strange encounters . . . under surveillance . . .  disappearing journals . . . and then the phone rings.

Crummer, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and a BS in Mechanical Engineering, has won numerous blue ribbons from music competitions. He performs with his band at folk festivals, has authored instructional music booklets, and since 1995, has led music workshops in Dobro, slide guitar, Flat-pick and Finger-style guitar, and gospel singing. He writes songs and poetry chapbooks, and he won the Edward Lee Flemming, Jr. Florida Old Time Music Championship Award in 2008, presented by the Friends of Florida Folk.

He served as the second president of the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, was published in the first edition of Bacopa Literary Review, and was twice selected in the Hippodrome Theater’s monologue competitions. His first novel, Wrestling God, was published in 2013.