Zora’s Immortal South

by Alexandra W. Pecci

Eatonville, Florida has one main street, with dusty sidewalks, drooping Spanish moss, and sad, tin-roofed houses of faded stucco. Blink and you may miss it: the total land area is just about a mile. Yet for admirers of Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Eatonville is the home of tall tales, true love, and a vibrant culture that seeps from real-life onto the page.

Although she is best known for her fiction, Hurston traveled throughout the American South conducting ethnographic fieldwork and capturing the stories, songs, folklore, d...