The River to Glory Land Read online

  Cover Copy

  “Teach me to fly,” I said softly, still gazing out my side window.

  “Huh?” Scott asked, unsure that he’d heard me correctly.

  “I mean…I…” Startled, I realized what I’d said. “I mean, it’s so beautiful—it’s just…” I didn’t have the words.

  “I know,” he said almost reverently. “It is.”

  We were quiet for a little while, looking out over the sparkling Atlantic. The day couldn’t have been more perfect. And because it was only about eleven in the morning, the sun was not yet overhead. It created a golden fan of color on the turquoise water below. I thought that if I died right then, I would have had a preview of Heaven even before taking my last breath.

  Also by Janie DeVos

  Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees

  The Art of Breathing

  The Glory Land series

  A Corner in Glory Land

  The Rising of Glory Land

  Table of Contents

  Cover Copy

  Also by Janie DeVos

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Teaser Chapter

  About the Author

  The River to Glory Land

  Janie DeVos

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Janie DeVos

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  Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: December 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0436-9

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0436-6

  First Print Edition: December 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0437-6

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0437-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For my aunt, Jane Tarilton Lewis;

  A true Miami golden girl.

  Acknowledgments

  As I began the research for my book, life intervened with a wonderful twist of fate. I discovered that Jo Ann Bass, granddaughter of the founders of the iconic Miami restaurant Joe’s Stone Crabs, lives just twenty minutes from me during the summer months, which is the off-season of the restaurant (one can only buy stone crabs in a month with an R in it.). Jo graciously invited me to lunch at her gorgeous home, which is actually a 100-year-old converted barn. We sat in her kitchen eating chicken salad, and she regaled me with stories of her grandparents in the 1920s. One story involved her grandmother chasing Al Capone’s girlfriend out of the restaurant. Her grandmother liked Al’s wife. Sitting with Jo has been one of the highlights of my years of research. I’d like to thank this most beautiful and elegant lady for the memories; those that she shared with me, as well the ones that she and I created together. I will cherish that afternoon always.

  And many thanks to Jack Riley, FAA Certified Aviation Instructor and friend, who didn’t just explain the basics of flying to me, but took me up in his plane so that I could experience them. As we soared over the Blue Ridge Mountains and through the gorges, I thought a lot about the courageous pioneers in the field of flight. Even with all of the instruments available to pilots today, the simple act of flying remains an amazing feat to me. Having said that, flying 100 years ago, without much more than a compass as equipment, took more than courage. It took an immense desire to grab that brass ring; one that was sky-high and out of reach for the vast majority of humankind.

  I’m also extremely grateful to my friend and fellow Rotarian Dr. Arch Woodard for helping me understand the uses and side effects of chloroform in the early days. Though this was long before his time, he was kind enough to provide me with valuable information about early twentieth-century medicine, and kinder still in using layman’s terms in discussing it with me.

  Finally, I am greatly indebted to the older generation of Miamians who generously offered up their rich memories and recollections of a golden age in Miami…a time that has long since vanished but that set the foundation for the beautiful city that glitters and glows in her own right today. To simply say ‘thank you’ to each of you seems like far too little. My gratitude is so great. For now, a heartfelt ‘thank you’ will just have to do.

  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 grabb
ed 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 season was starting out as an exceptionally slow one. Far fewer guests were filling the hotel’s one hundred and fifty rooms, and fewer patrons were filling their bellies in its two restaurants.

  Staring over Mr. Burton’s right shoulder, I thought back to my conversation with my sister during breakfast in our grandparents’ old home. Immediately following the storm, we stayed at the Spinnaker until my parents could hire a reputable contractor to build our new home. But the Weisses had become hurricane weary, and decided to pack up and move back to Ohio. When they did, we immediately took up residence in the old home place on the Miami River.

  I sat across from Olivia while she had her usual breakfast of lightly buttered toast and black coffee, and I thought for the millionth time how very different we were. Though we were close in age (I would turn nineteen in December, and Olivia would turn eighteen in January), that’s where the similarities stopped. Though we both had blond hair, mine was more of a deep gold like Daddy’s. Hers was platinum blond like our great aunt Ivy’s. Today as always, she wore one of her drab suits or skirts, and, as usual, she had her hair pinned up in a bun at the nape of her neck. Though I’d tried to get her to go with me when I had my long, straight hair cut into a stylish bob, she r
efused. She said that a secretary needed to look more respectable than some flapper out for a night on the town. Lifting my eyebrows at her was my only reaction to her barb; otherwise, I chose to ignore it.

  Olivia glanced up at me as she buttered the other half of her toast. Catching me watching her, she smiled a smile that could melt the hearts of the most hardened, Her eyes were ice blue, also like Aunt Ivy’s, while mine were light brown, like Mama’s. I was quite a bit taller than my very petite sister. She’d had the good fortune of being born with delicate features that I’d always envied. My features were more angular and though I wished I could somehow soften them, I couldn’t complain too much. I never lacked for male attention. Although Olivia hadn’t either, any poor boy’s attempt to talk with my sister was met, inevitably, with few words and lame excuses. She wasn’t a snob, just shy.

  Our father, Paul Strickland, was a quiet, serious man, but he certainly wasn’t shy.

  On the other hand, our mother was nothing less than outgoing—and outspoken at times—yet everyone loved her. To be honest, everyone loved them both. I was somewhere in between our parents’ two distinct personalities, but Olivia was a hard one to figure out. As we finished breakfast, I was trying to convince her to give up her job as secretary at Doxley’s Import Export Company, and come to work at the Spinnaker instead.

  Olivia bit off a corner of her toast and chewed slowly as she seemed to be mulling over the idea of coming to work for our grandparents. Finally, after wiping her small, bow-shaped mouth, she said, “Thank you, sister, but no. Truly, I’ve never been one who thought it a good idea to work with family. After all, who can you complain to after a long day’s work if the one you want to complain about is the one spooning mashed potatoes onto your plate?”

  Though she sounded like she was about forty-years-old, I had to admit she had a point; however, that didn’t change the fact that my grandparents needed her.