Exiles in Eden : Life Among the Ruins of Florida's Great Recession

An on-the-ground, intimate tour of the human toll of the nation’s record-breaking foreclosure crisis

While working to help his father’s small company “trash out”—enter and empty—foreclosed homes in Florida during the 2008 housing crash, Paul Reyes wrote Exiles in Eden, a hard-hitting, personal, and poetic portrayal of the people and communities affected by the foreclosure crisis.

Grounded in Florida and Reyes’s family history, and with character-driven investigations into the dark corners of the crisis, Reyes explores the human element of this grim rattling of the American Dream. From examining the unique “ecosystems” of each failed mortgage to witnessing parts of abandoned Florida returning to its wild natural state, Reyes takes the reader far from the machinations of Wall Street to the sunbaked side streets where the true costs of this crisis can be seen.

The result is an extraordinary book about the allure and dream of home—and a portrait of an America where the terms of ownership can be forcibly or invisibly redrawn for unaware dreamers. A reminder of the everyday impacts of inflation, overdevelopment, and financial fraud, Exiles in Eden uncovers the stories lost beneath national economic collapse.