Happy birthday, Frank G. Slaughter

It is the birthday of prolific Florida novelist Frank G. Slaughter (1908), who wrote 56 books that sold more than 60 million copies. He wrote while he was a surgeon at Jacksonville’s Riverside Hospital but eventually left to devote full time to writing. Slaughter’s books were never considered literary achievements but they were widely read and immensely popular. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings met him once while she was a hospital patient. She told him he should to stick to surgery. His first book, That None Should Die (1941), gave a young surgeon’s view of socialized medicine. It was a bestseller in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. Many of Slaughter’s books were set in Florida. Among them was Fort Everglades (1951), which was set in a fort on the Miami River during the Second Seminole War. It served as the basis for the 1951 Gary Cooper film Distant Drums. The film swiped scenes from the book but the studio didn’t buy the movie rights until a suit was filed after the film was made.