Prior to starting South Moon Under, Rawlings lived in the Ocala Scrub for two and a half months, with an elderly woman named Piety Fiddia and her moonshining son, Leonard. The chief characters in the novel, Piety Lantry and her son Lant Jacklin, are very closely modeled on their real-life counterparts. Rawlings had not only helped Piety with her daily chores, but had joined Leonard in illegal deer hunting, in shooting and eating a limpkin ("if you haven't eaten roast limpkin, you just haven't eaten, but you can go to county, state and federal jails for shooting them" she wrote), and in running his moonshine still. Although not all of the other characters are as closely modeled after specific prototypes, they are very much drawn from various people Rawlings knew. One of Rawlings's chief stated goals in her Florida writings was to show her readers what sort of...