Lake Front: At The Edge of Nature and Nostalgia

By Amanda McCallister

Lake Front: At the Edge of Nature and Nostalgia is a quiet journey through Winter Haven’s Chain of Lakes, where water, land, and memory intersect. Blending stark black-and-white photography with poetic reflections, the book explores how these freshwater landscapes shape the people who live beside them and how they hold onto history even as they change.

From ancient cypress trees rising from dark water to open horizons where sky and lake merge, Lake Front captures a Florida that is lived-in rather than idealized. These images reflect places marked by time, use, and resilience, spaces where nature and community have grown together for generations.

Interwoven with the photography and prose are recipes tied to lake life and old Florida tables, the foods people bring to porches, cookouts, fish fries, holidays, and family gatherings. The result is part visual memoir, part place-based storytelling, and part community cookbook, a portrait of a region told through what it looks like, what it remembers, and what it feeds its people.

More than a photographic record, Lake Front invites readers to slow down and notice what endures, quiet rituals, familiar shorelines, and the flavors that carry a lifetime of stories.