Author’s Note
In order to portray Miami, Miami Beach, and the surrounding areas in the 1920s as accurately as possible, I used street numbers and names listed on maps from that time. For instance, MacArthur Causeway was originally named the County Causeway, and A1A was Atlantic Boulevard. If I cause the reader any confusion in any way by representing the area as it was then, my deepest apologies. However, if I open a window, offering the reader an interesting glimpse of a Miami long since gone, then I’ve done my job.
Preface
Eden in Ruins
September 18, 1926
Miami, Florida
The roof blew off at exactly 3:17 a.m. I knew that because the violent winds that invaded our home tore the kitchen clock off the wall and shot it across our living room. It barely missed Mama’s head before it shattered at my feet. The roar in the room was so deafening that I couldn’t hear the clock’s wood and glass case explode. But I could see the time, and it was 3:17.
Suddenly, Daddy grabbed my arm and pulled me into the kitchen. With Olivia and Mama right behind us, we made our way out the back door, which was opening and closing like it was possessed. Making a human chain, we clung to avocado and mango trees as we crossed the backyard, paralleling the rising river, to Howie Weiss’s house. The sky was an eerie cement-gray color, which only blended into the gray curtain of rain pelting us hard enough to skin us alive. I glanced up for a second, and caught a glimpse of Howie’s silhouette cast by the illumination of his lamp. He stood in the doorway and urged us to hurry. Thank God, he knows, I thought.
At last, we made it up the porch steps and into his kitchen; then Daddy and Howie used their shoulders to force the door shut.
“How’d you know we were coming?” Daddy breathlessly asked as he wiped the wetness away from his eyes.
“Part of someone’s roof hit the side of our house,” Howie replied as his wife, Ellen, handed towels to all of us. “Looked out the back door to see what the dickens had crashed against our east wall with such force and saw y’all comin’. Glad I did because I wouldn’t have heard you poundin’ on the door.”
“That mighta been our roof,” Daddy said. “It’s completely gone.”
“Well, thank God, you’re not,” Mrs. Weiss replied. “C’mon. Let’s move into the living room. We’ll be more comfortable in there.”
We all settled and I noticed that everyone had found someone to sit close to, closer than usual. I was sitting by Mama on the couch, while Daddy was sitting next to Olivia on a loveseat. She hadn’t said a word since she’d let out a blood-curdling scream when our roof started to peel back. Even in the weak lamplight, I could see that my younger sister was as pale as a ghost. Obviously, she was scared to death. We all were. But with Olivia’s quiet nature, I was never sure what she was thinking.
Just then, something hit the house hard. “God a’ mighty, this is a bad one,” Mr. Weiss said quietly, almost to himself. Fortunately, the sound of windows breaking did not accompany the loud bang, for if it had, it was likely their roof would go, too.
The quiet in the room was heavy as we all continued to listen to the storm’s relentless rampage. Each time the wind reached a high-pitched wail, I held my breath, and then let it out as the gale calmed down. Everyone gripped the arms of whatever piece of furniture they sat on with white-knuckled readiness as though we knew that at any second we might be forced to make a mad dash out of the house, but there was really no place to go. The neighbor between the Weisses’ place and ours wasn’t home and the place was boarded up tightly. The neighbor on the other side of the Weisses was quite a ways down. Finally, my mother broke the silence.
“Poor Mama said she got harassed all day by folks sayin’ that the headline about the approaching hurricane was just an attempt to sell more papers.”
She was referring to my grandmother, Eve Harjo, who worked at the Miami Herald. Grandma had told her that by noon she’d heard enough such malarkey and headed on home.
Home for my grandparents was actually the ten-story, Mediterranean-style Spinnaker Hotel they owned on Miami Beach, and the Weisses’ house belonged to them too. It was the place where my mother and her brother, Dylan, had been raised, and Olivia and I had spent a lot of time there as children.
“I’m surprised your folks didn’t come stay with y’all, Eliza,” Mrs. Weiss remarked. “It seems like it’d be safer here, than right on the beach in a hotel that tall.”
“They wanted to keep an eye on things,” Mama explained. “Now all we can do is pray they’ll be fine.”
And I was praying. I prayed that my grandparents and the hotel would be standing after the storm. For without those two people I adored, I’d be devastated, and without their hotel, I’d be unemployed.
“You get everything tied down real good at the marina, Striker?” Mrs. Weiss asked my father. Everyone called him “Striker” because he always got a strike when he threw a fishing line in.
“As good as I could, Ellen,” Daddy replied, taking his eyes off the ceiling to look over at her. “Fortunately, we reinforced the building after the last big blow, but I couldn’t get three of the boats we’ve been working on inside. We lashed ’em down as best we could at the dock, though.”
My father was an expert craftsman who built boats, both motor and sailing vessels, and my parents owned Strickland Water Crafts, which had been a very successful marina on the Miami River for years. While Daddy designed and sold his much sought-after boats, Mama worked in the office.
Throughout the remainder of the early morning hours, we made small talk as we continued to watch the ceiling, praying the roof would hold, and listening to the storm’s wrath pound us with a fury unlike anything any of us had experienced before. Finally, as we sat at the kitchen table eating some of Mrs. Weiss’s guava jelly donuts, the rain stopped battering the house and the winds died down. Opening the kitchen door, we cautiously stepped outside to look at the new Miami awaiting us. In the course of just one night, she had fallen, leaving much of the city completely flattened and still submerged after a mountain of water from Biscayne Bay had surged inland. No one said a word as we surveyed the absolute destruction around us, though I could hear Mrs. Weiss and Olivia softly crying.
“Well, I swear, would you take a look at that?” Mr. Weiss exclaimed. Our eyes followed his to a sight that I was sure I would never forget if I lived to be a thousand. There, caught up in the splintered and leafless branches were fish, hundreds of them, looking like peculiar fruit hanging in a ruined Eden.
Chapter 1
Waltz of the Water Stains
November 1927
I noticed another water stain on the vaulted ceiling that made a trail down the stucco wall as I was whirled around the Spinnaker’s ballroom. It was one of many stains in my grandparents’ beautiful hotel, sad reminders of last year’s hurricane.
“Slow down a smidge, Mr. Burton,” I said, forcing myself to smile at the foul-smelling millionaire from Rhode Island. “A waltz should be a thing of beauty, danced in a smooth and graceful tempo. Not a race around the room.”
I forced a laugh to match his, then looked back at the damaged ceiling to avoid the old lecher’s whiskey-fueled grin. His eyes strayed to my bosom nearly as often as he stepped on my feet during our thrice-weekly dance lessons. He and I were the only two in the room, which made me a tad uncomfortable. As my eyes moved past a bank of arched windows that looked out at the Atlantic, I noticed there was a small crack in the upper left corner of one. Ah, well, I thought. They’re doing the best they can at getting everything repaired. Restoring the Spinnaker to its original glory prior to the storm had been an expensive undertaking, and slowing the progress of those repairs was the fact that our busy