“A citrus plantation in Florida, owned by my grandfather. Sold off when he died.”
It isn’t often that writers receive such signs from above, so I obediently set out to transform Maitland Plantation into the beating heart of this book, and its owner a devoted horticulturalist. It was as if I’d found the key to his soul: until then, I wasn’t completely sure if Simon would turn out to be (in my editor’s words) the “goodie” or the “baddie.” Several months later, when I visited Winter Park for a bookstore signing, I noticed the name “Maitland” on the map nearby, nestled comfortably among the suburban streets.
Nearly all of the characters in this book are purely fictional, though the Ashley Gang did in fact exist, terrorizing law-abiding Floridians during the early Prohibition era, until they were massacred in an ambush at Sebastian’s Inlet in 1924.
A final historical note: I based Portia Bertram’s experience at Radcliffe on that of Zora Neale Hurston, who was also raised in Florida, at Barnard College, although Hurston persevered and earned a BA in Anthropology in 1928. In fact, a number of extraordinary African-American women came of age in the Everglades State during the early part of the century, founding colleges and newspapers and fighting for racial equality. I like to think that Miss Bertram may have a fascinating life ahead of her, as this particular chapter of it comes to an end.
Acknowledgments
I gave my formidable editor, Rachel Kahan, early warning that Cocoa Beach was proving a Very Troublesome Manuscript. The plot kept growing and transforming, throwing off shoots, like the gothic Florida vegetation itself. The central feint of the narrative had so many facets. The main characters—all of them survivors of deep trauma—were deeply reluctant to make their true selves known to me. Parts of the book were written and rewritten so many times, I couldn’t even remember where I’d started. This had never happened to me! I wailed. It’s all supposed to fall in place at the end!
So Rachel took the draft home and did what all the best editors do: she found what was good (much more than I thought, thank goodness) and told me what wasn’t working, and how she thought I might fix it. I took the file back, followed her advice, found a few flashes of precious insight, delved deeper into my characters’ human souls, and rewrote the ending entirely. If you enjoyed Cocoa Beach at all, you have Rachel to thank. Send flowers. Or chocolate. (She loves chocolate.)
My deep appreciation goes as well to the entire William Morrow team—Tavia Kowalchuk, Lauren Truskowski, Kate Schafer, and Liate Stehlik, among many others—who turn pixels into books and send them into the world. My copyeditor was tasked with watching out for “dead rabbits”—my personal term for the bits accidentally left behind when you (ahem) keep changing the plot—in addition to the usual proofreading and fact-checking, and I thank her gratefully, while accepting full responsibility for anything overlooked.
My agent, Alexandra Machinist of ICM, already knows how much I love and appreciate her, but it never hurts to remind her. Her ridiculously capable assistant, Hillary Jacobson, has saved my skin on multiple occasions.
Throughout this challenging process, the love and support of my husband and children kept me writing on, in music school waiting rooms and soccer sidelines, and I am forever grateful to them.
And to you, my readers, whose kind comments shore up my confidence over the trickiest of narrative hurdles, and remind me why I write these stories in the first place.
About the Author
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz Williams spent several years in New York and London hiding
her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer
of small persons, before her career as a writer took off. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut
shore.
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