Hooks, Christopher2017-09-182017-09-182017-06-15http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11868/170Is Jeffers an Alligator Zoo Park magician or the Messiah? “Jeffers – Master Magician” is the story of two friends who live unapologetically on the edge of poverty in the rugged, un-decorous part of the South. Jimmy, a single father with an addict ex, and Jeffers, a magician whose tricks are closer to miracles, are immersed in a place where trailers and Hot Pockets dominate the landscape, and alligators roam free. Jimmy witnesses “losing” his best friend to his biggest trick gone awry, which dives the story into the friendship as it emerged in the Alligator Zoo Park and elsewhere. It isn’t until Jeffers’ return, clean-shaven and alligator bitten, that we realize his trick is a mere prelude for actual departure from this low world – leaving Jimmy behind in his hopelessness. Why do some of us escape and some of us stay? And what lurks there, gator-like, in the question of staying?en-USNovelFloridaThesis