THE HOUSE ON BISCAYNE BAY, by Chanel Cleeton
The House on Biscayne Bay is pure escapism, set in the early days of Miami’s colonization by wealthy Northerners and land-boom speculators and told in the voices of socialites and social climbers who might like a beach read.
The novel opens with commentary by Anna Barnes, whose husband has commissioned an architect to build a nouveau-riche Jazz Age behemoth to rival Vizcaya. Anna does not approve of her husband’s extravagance. But Anna is not the main character — “the house,” Marbrisa, is.
Carmen Acosta, mourning the loss of her parents in a capsize in Cuba, arrives at the mansion where her estranged sister, Carolina, and brother-in-law, Asher Wyatt, live. Her grief is compounded by frustration over Asher’s control of her inheritance. Carmen finds a portrait of Anna: “Was she a guest in the house? Or one of the previous owners?”
The point of view pings back and forth through time, between Anna just after World War I and Carmen on the cusp of America’s entry into World War II. Anna complains, “I may be Robert’s wife, but Marbrisa is his mistress, and she holds his interest with an intense focus I cannot break.” Carmen muses, “How do you guard against incursions when you possess so much of the land and sea that it’s impossible to control who trespasses?”
Marbrisa is a black hole, a money pit, a gentrifier’s dream turned nightmare. Anna warns, “Everyone knows someone who has been defrauded here.” Asher, who has restored the decaying mansion, admits to Carmen, “I didn’t grow up in a place like this….I guess it felt like a way to say I had arrived.” As for Carolina, Carmen tells Asher, “Carolina wasn’t happy in Havana. Found the society there and our parents’ wishes for us to be too stifling.”
The novel is punctuated with screeching peacocks, strained marriages, missing jewels, mysterious deaths, a labyrinth of overgrown hedges, a nod to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” shadowy hired help, and plenty of gossip. The Great Depression, a major factor in the story, merits only passing reference, a motivation to dispense largesse by creating jobs.
As Carolina told Carmen, “Miami is more than this boring old house, you know. You should get out sometime.” For those seeking a Gothic take on Miami in its robber-baron heyday, The House on Biscayne Bay provides that escape.
$18 paperback, Penguin Random House. Also available in hardback, e-book, and audiobook formats.
You must be logged in to post a comment.