Works by
Lu Vickers
(Writer)

Fiction

• Breathing Underwater -- Nominated 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction
  In 1970s Chattahoochee, Florida, where the main employer is a mental institution, it's sink or swim for Lily. When her mama, a former beauty queen who once dreamt of being Miss Florida, takes Lily and her siblings fishing one morning, Lily nearly drowns while her mother looks on, "weighing her gains against her losses." Lily proves to be a survivor, which she will need to prove again and again, as she struggles to stay afloat amidst her mother's slow mental deterioration, her first love, and her quest to come to terms with who she is and what she wants from this crazy world. With lyrical prose, Lu Vickers gives voice to Lily's inner soul, and in turn reveals how universal our needs and desires are.

Non-fiction

• Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida's Oldest Roadside Attractions (2007) by Lu Vickers and Sara Dionne
  In the postwar explosion of domestic tourism, Weeki Wachee spring offered the quintessential vacation fantasy, a city of colorful mermaids in a natural crystal spring right off the West Coast highway in a sparsely inhabited Florida. In those early days, the mermaids had to stand alongside the highway to flag travelers down, but once word of their charms got out, travelers headed south to playgrounds in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa found Weeki Wachee a tantalizing detour from the grueling two-lane road connecting vacationland with the work-a-day world to the north. Vickers and Dionne show how that local novelty became a stellar international attraction.
  
  Founded in 1947 by Walton Hall Smith and Newt Perry, Weeki Wachee and its featured attraction, mermaids, combined the allure of pinup girls with the wholesome talents of variety entertainers to create a daily schedule of underwater acts ranging from eating bananas and performing ballet to staging underwater musicals. For nearly 60 years, these mermaids with their underwater talents have attracted crowds of vacationers, film crews, and celebrities. Drawing on extensive archival research as well as interviews with dozens of mermaids and other park employees, Vickers traces the park's rise to prominence. Combined with Dionne's arrangement of 250 photos, the resulting work shows what it was like to be a mermaid at Weeki Wachee in its heyday.
  
  Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids also explores the enduring appeal of the attraction. Once people get past Weeki Wachee's once crumbling, recently restored exterior, they continue to be just as genuinely awed by the mermaids as Elvis was.