Beatriz Williams' novel "Cocoa Beach" transports readers to the past

September 11, 2017 12:00 am • Last Updated: September 12, 2017 10:21 am

Beatriz Williams' novel "Cocoa Beach" paints the world of 1920s Florida

In her eighth novel “Cocoa Beach,” Lyme resident and New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams presents a story of love, suspense, betrayal and redemption set over two separate time periods — on the Western Front at the end of World War I and in the sunny yet hedonistic backwaters of Cocoa Beach, Florida, in 1922.

Narrator Virginia Fortescue runs away from a childhood spent hiding her father’s criminal past, to the war-torn fields of France as an ambulance driver working for the American Red Cross. It is here that she falls in love with Captain Simon Fitzwilliam, who has a dark past of his own. But the truth surrounding her husband only begins to unfold once she is widowed in 1922. After traveling down to Cocoa Beach to tie up loose ends, Virginia starts to learn that her life may also be in danger.

As a self-proclaimed “history nut,” Williams manages to effortlessly set the scene to these historical backdrops — her “obsessions” with the early 20th century and the years leading up to WWI only aiding her. We recently talked to Williams about this and about “Cocoa Beach.” Her answers have been edited for space.

You can meet Williams Thursday at Mohegan Sun as she wraps the ninth annual Connecticut Authors Trail. Sit in for a live Q&A with the author at 7 p.m. or come for the 8 p.m. book signing. Both will take place in the Cabaret Theatre.

Q. The main character Virginia was first introduced in your book “A Certain Age.” Did you know while writing that book that you wanted to write another story about Virginia?

A. Oh, yes. I was saving the ’20s time period to tell the right story, and that finally came along with my book “A Certain Age.” I have characters that you sort of glimpse in one book become my next character in the next book. So, Virginia was first introduced in that book.

When I wrote a “Certain Age,” that book was a retelling of Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” I took that story and set it in 1920s Manhattan. In Strauss’ opera, Sophie, who is the young ingénue character, does not have a sister. But in my story, I gave her a sister specifically to create a character who I then could use as my main character in “Cocoa Beach.”

Q. And why set the story in Cocoa Beach, Florida?

A. I had known for many years that I had wanted to write a gothic novel set in Florida in the 1920s, with all the tropes of the gothic novel — the young woman, dropped in a new environment, without family, without defenses, it is a strange and threatening environment and she has to learn who to trust. And when I say gothic, I’m thinking of modern gothic novels, like those from Victoria Holt and Daphne Du Maurier.

So, I had been traveling in Florida and getting all these very gothic vibes from the landscape and the sort of boom-and-bust history of Florida that left these ruins behind. There was all this rampant vegetation, and to me, it felt like a tropical Cornwall. Particularly with the prohibition era, you had all this undeveloped coastline in Florida and therefore all this smuggling coming in and happening in Cocoa Beach. So, what a great way to set my 1920s novel that I wanted to write.

Q. What about this time period, that of the 1920s and WWI, do you find fascinating?

A. I have focused on the first half of the 20th century, partly because I developed this fascination, or obsession, with the First World War when I was in college, and “Cocoa Beach” goes very deeply into that. I try to paint that feeling of dislocation that we felt as a culture in the wake of this devastating war and the peculiar nature of that war. There was the growth of modernism and that sort of rising tide that was happening before the war. And then the war comes, and it’s such a devastating experience for western civilization. The ’20s then become a period of disorientation, and people were trying to pursue more fun but more shallow things because they wanted to tape their lives over instead of dealing with what happened. Combine that with all the technology and social change, and all of a sudden you’ve got this fascinating historical period called the ’20s.

Q. What really stands out to me is that you have been able to set the scene and the time period so convincingly. How were you able to do that?

A. The answer is that it is a process of immersion. I call it method writing, where you just literally flip on the skin and become that person. It’s trying to draw people into the head and inside the skin of another person, and to me, that’s the most important job that I can do as a writer. Creating a convincing world where these characters are moving about and acting their drama is all a part of that.

You can’t just stop the play to give the historical details that are going on. You have to embed these facts within the narrative. And it’s harder than it looks. It’s about embedding those details in a convincing way and not making it seem like you are a modern tourist looking around this landscape.

Q. You also do a great job of adding in the minute details of everyday life to back up the historical settings that you are writing about. For example, Virginia was driving the Model T in France, and there is one line where you say that she reached down with her left hand to switch gears. That line made realize me that I didn’t actually understand how a Model T was really built.

A. Well, you know, the internet is a great place for all of that. Once I realized that the Model T does not work like a modern car at all, and that it has completely different steering and starting, I knew that I had to research how it actually worked. First, I read about it, and then I needed to visualize it. You can go on YouTube now, and they have tutorials on how to start a model T. I watched those several times, and I took note of how the engine sounds and all that. There was no brake pedal, for example, and that was fascinating to me.

Partly, this is one of the big problems in writing historical fiction. The stuff you don’t know you don’t know. Stumbling onto this thing about the Model T, it was like, oh, wait a minute, you can’t just assume that this thing has a clutch and a brake pedal. Again, you can’t tell the story through your modern eyes. You have to realize where you are making assumptions about things.

Q. How did you make sure that you had a proper backing in all this history before starting to write the story?

A. Partly what helps is that I have loved history from the time that I was small, so a lot of it was just accumulated knowledge, and that isn’t something that you can replace. But I’m always making mistakes, in fact. Copy editors in the last resort will help with anything that seems a little fishy.

Part of it, however, has to do with my time in college when I developed an obsession with old movies. A philanthropist in my college town had bought up an old 1920s movie palace with an organ and everything. He restored all these old movies. It was $5 for a double feature, and the popcorn was $1 — it was the best deal. He just wanted to share his old movies with people, and so I would go there when I was supposed to be studying, and I would watch a double feature. What better use of my time? I noticed that those historical periods weren’t just about the fact that everyone had a cigarette in their hand and a drink in the other. It was the cadence, the voice, the syntax. The way people spoke to each other — you can’t just go on Google and look up a list of slang words from the 1920s and think you’ve got it. It’s the way people spoke, the sentences they used and the way they put them together, the way people sounded.

But watching old movies is so important. You get the flavor, and the small details. The way people interacted with each other and how men and women would speak with each other. And the sense of fashion. What people were wearing or what they wore for different occasions. Old movies are great, newspapers are great, and novels that were written during that period are also great. I’ve read a considerable amount of Fitzgerald and Hemingway and then other writers. It’s those original sources that can be the most useful for capturing not just the little details but also the things that are more intangible, which create the scene for readers.

m.biekert@theday.com