Interview with Jason Vuic, author of “A Town Without Pity”
Jason Vuic’s new book about Arcadia, FL, in 1987 is A Town Without Pity: AIDS, Race, and Resistance in Florida’s Deep South (University Press of Florida, 2025). Vuic is the author of other books, including The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream, which wonthe Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Florida Nonfiction and the Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Award. Vuic is also the author of The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History and other works. The publication date for A Town Without Pity is 10/21/25.
Your new book is A Town Without Pity: AIDS, Race, and Resistance in Florida’s Deep South. What is your broad overview of the topic for someone just learning about your book?
In a nutshell, the book is about an old Southern town in the interior of Southwest Florida, which, in the 1980s, witnessed two national news-making events: 1) the exoneration of a Black migrant worker named James Richardson, who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit; and 2) the very public mistreatment of the HIV-positive Ray boys, three white, hemophilia-suffering brothers who were banished from school and church and forced to leave town after someone burned down their house. For a time, Arcadia was everywhere—ABC News dubbed it a “Town without Pity”—and rightly or wrongly it was the most hated municipality in the United States. So, this is my deep dive into the how and why of these two events. But, in the background, I also examine how tiny, insular Arcadia, so seemingly changeless all these years, yet so close to the coast, had continued to exist.
What brought you to this topic? How did you get the idea for this book?
I’m in my early 50s, and was in high school in nearby Punta Gorda when Arcadia went nuts. People were terrified of AIDS—everyone was in the ‘80s—but instead of listening to medical advice and supporting the boys and their parents, the townsfolk turned against them. It got ugly and just blew up in the press. I’ll never forget it. Then, just as the Ray case ended, Arcadia blew up again with the freeing of poor James Richardson, an illiterate fruit picker sentenced to life in prison for poisoning his seven children. He didn’t do it, and a racist sheriff and a win-at-any-cost prosecutor won a conviction by burying exculpatory evidence. I remember thinking then, as now, “what is going on with this town?”
Is there anything about this book that you think is especially relevant to right now?
I didn’t really touch on it in the book, but it struck me that people in insular DeSoto County in the ‘80s were disdainful of expert medical advice in the same way that many Americans were during the COVID pandemic. A common refrain in Arcadia was “They’re not telling us everything!” Or, “One day they’re going to find out we were right!” There was something conspiratorial about the whole thing. At least, that’s what people believed. As for Richardson… I’d say his case is relevant today precisely because it’s not new. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a mind-boggling 91 people have been exonerated in Florida since 1989. Some have spent their entire adult lives in prison. So, Richardson isn’t alone.
Is the story of AIDS in Florida very different from other places? If so, how?
Well, I can’t say that I know how the AIDS epidemic differed in Florida from other states, but Arcadia’s response to the Rays was relatively unique. To be sure, people acted horribly to victims of AIDS throughout the United States. And in Arcadia’s defense, there were AIDS-in-schools dustups in at least half a dozen American towns and cities in summer 1987 alone. There were bans, protests, boycotts…you name it. But when a federal judge ruled in 1987 that the Ray boys were allowed to attend regular school—that, in effect, their segregated learning arrangement had been illegal—Arcadians went nuts. They formed a 1,000-member parental rights group, held a rally at a local rodeo arena featuring rebel flags and an anti-gay evangelical invocation, and heard one of their leaders say that “the courts are shoving this down our throats like they did with Civil Rights!” It was that communal resistance that intrigued me, that feeling that “the outside world is attacking us” so common in Arcadia that set it apart.
What is Arcadia like today?
I’ve only been in and out of Arcadia recently for research, but I can say the town has changed a great deal demographically. It is still grindingly poor and mostly dependent on agriculture, cattle and oranges specifically, as well as the state prison. But up until the early 1990s its population was mostly white and black; probably 75/25, I’d guess, with black residents living in what historically was a segregated neighborhood called the “Quarters.” But due to freezes in central Florida, large orange grove companies planted millions of new trees in inland Southwest Florida, which brought thousands of migrant Hispanic workers, many of whom stayed permanently. So today, Arcadia and DeSoto County are probably 25 percent Hispanic. As a result, there’s a different dynamic there than the Old South town it used to be.
What do you think are some of the biggest differences between the public reaction to AIDS in the 1980s and today?
There is no comparison. In the early-to-mid 1980s, Americans were terrified of AIDS. Americans feared AIDS. There were even some Americans, including evangelical ministers and far-right, fringe politicians who wanted to put people with AIDS into camps. According to one Gallup poll, a majority of Americans thought that people with HIV should be required to carry cards stating such. Now, due to incredible advances in AIDS therapies and an increase in general knowledge about AIDS, Americans hardly fear it at all. That doesn’t mean it still isn’t a huge problem, and I’d argue most people still know it is, but that irrational fear, that fear that a cook in a restaurant or a kiss on the lips or boys in elementary school could give it to you, is gone.
How do you go about writing a book like this, what is the process like?
In prepping for a book, I usually read every news and magazine article and book on the subject that I can find. Then I make a spreadsheet of themes, possible subject lines, and a list of people that I need to track down to interview. This interview and research stage usually takes me about a year, and then writing the book and moving to publication generally takes about three years. Five books in, I’ve developed a pattern. But this book was tough, primarily because the subject matter was so dark. I wanted to use these two terrible events in order to examine Arcadia. It’s a tough, insular town. But it’s only a stone’s throw from the HOAs and stucco insta-communities of the coast. “We’re 50 miles and 50 years from Sarasota,” locals would say. But for me, an outsider, getting people to explain why wasn’t easy, particularly when I was asking them to relive a really terrible time.
How many times did you listen to Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity” while you were writing the book?
Ha! The weird thing is, everyone assumes the whole “Town without Pity” thing relates to the old Gene Pitney song or to the Kirk Douglas movie of the same name. It probably does, but it came from a nightly news story on Arcadia that aired in June 1987 on ABC’s World News Tonight. Here’s the thing, though: neither the host Peter Jennings nor the on-the-ground news correspondent John Quiñones ever said those words. In fact, the phrase “A Town without Pity” appeared only momentarily in a pre-commercial graphic as Jennings intoned, “When we come back, the tragic story of AIDS. One town and three brothers.” That was it. No one at ABC used those words again. But somehow “A Town without Pity,” the unspoken title of a Thursday evening nationally televised news segment, reverberated with the press. And that’s how Arcadia became known.
What do you think makes Florida distinct as a place?
Oh geez. I’d need a year to adequately answer that one. For me, it’s the impermanence of the place, the transitory nature of the place. I grew up in a 100-year-old house on a brick street leading to a park named for Albert Gilchrist, a Punta Gorda resident who became governor of Florida in 1908. Punta Gorda was an old town for Southwest Florida, with old buildings and families. But all around me were mid-century-modern communities like Port Charlotte, Cape Coral, Lehigh Acres, and North Port that didn’t exist until the 1950s. So everyone who lived there had moved there, and most had very little sense of place. I’ll give you an example. Once, in the 1990s, I walked into the Port Charlotte library and was shocked to discover that someone had discarded the library’s entire Florida collection and was selling the books for $1 apiece. Because no one cared. No one read the books and no one saw a reason to keep them. That’s why Arcadia is so fascinating to me. While the rest of Florida builds and develops and changes exponentially, perhaps even wantonly, Arcadia resists change. There are families there that can trace their Florida lineage back a full six generations. That’s astounding to me, because Florida’s a state where just 35 percent of residents are born there.
Your book references the Deep South, do you consider Florida to be the Deep South? If so, all of it or just parts?
I wouldn’t say Florida as a whole is in the Deep South anymore, but certainly there are parts of it that still belong. Arcadia does. DeSoto County really only has one Northern-transplant housing development that I can think of, namely Lake Suzy near I-75. The rest is rural and agricultural, with the ebb and flow of life there and the culture there more akin to Mississippi. There are real cattlemen there, and by that, I mean working cowboys, and the town has a rodeo that’s over 100 years old.
What are some other Florida stories that are still waiting to be told?
I’m interested right now in Florida’s tidal wave of invasive species. It seems like every week or so I hear of a new invasive animal showing up and I just shake my head. I mean, by this point, iguanas are old news. They’re permanent residents. Now there are capybara sightings. Asian swamp eel sightings. I even read that we may get crab-eating macaques! What the heck? So, we need someone like Craig Pittman or Carl Hiaasen to a big book about them, something funny, because if you can’t laugh at our invasive species phenomenon, you’ll definitely cry.
What books do you recommend to people interested in topics related to your book?
My favorite book examining the history of a small town through a gut-wrenching and controversial event is Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy Tyson. It’s a memoir about a racially charged murder and trial in eastern North Carolina and is really moving stuff. I’d also suggest Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove, which your readers are probably familiar with, as well as John Grisham’s non-fiction work The Innocent Man. As for the subject of AIDS in the ‘80s, the historian Paul Renfro at Florida State has a good book out called The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. All four books are super reads.
Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice
