John l parker books6/12/2023 ![]() ![]() He is lithe and tall, with thick reddish hair and piercing blue eyes. It's easy to believe that Parker, now 60, was a record-setting runner in college. The anticipation surrounding the November release of its sequel, "Again to Carthage," in which the main character returns to Kernsville to recapture dreams of his youth, was heightened by the fact that Parker almost died before it hit the shelves. The cult-classic status of "Once a Runner" is secured by the fact that even tattered paperback copies of the book, now out of print, go for hundreds of dollars online. He had last returned to Gainesville to write "Once a Runner," his 1978 novel about a track and field star at the fictional Southeastern University in Kernsville, Fla., a book Runner's World magazine recently described as being "so inspiring that it could be banned as a performance-enhancing drug." ![]() Parker, a former University of Florida runner, started spending winters in the little house on his brother's property about four years ago after a quarter-century absence from Alachua County. has come home again, to a tiny bungalow that sits beneath curtains of Spanish moss and the shadows of the ghosts of his past. ![]()
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