winner of the pen/bingham award
One sunny morning in 1969, Frances Ellerby finds herself in a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay. On the dock of a stilt house, with the dazzling Miami skyline in the distance, she meets the house’s owner, Dennis DuVal — and a new future reveals itself.
Turning away from her quiet, predictable life back home, Frances moves to Miami to be with Dennis, and over time earns the confidence of his wild-at-heart sister and the approval of his oldest friend. Frances and Dennis marry and have a child — but rather than growing complacent about their good fortune, they continue to face the challenges of intimacy in the complicated city they call home.
With Stiltsville, Susanna Daniel weaves the beauty, violence, and humanity of Miami’s coming-of-age with an enduring story of a marriage’s beginning, maturity, and heartbreaking demise.
"A wise and loving portrait of a marriage. . . . Susanna Daniel writes beautifully of matters of the heart."
— Jennifer Haigh, author of The Condition
the real stiltsville
