Stiltsville

📖 The Scoop

Award–winning author Susanna Daniel’s Stiltsville offers a gripping, bittersweet portrait of a marriage—and a romance—that deepens over three decades.

One sunny morning in 1969, twenty-six-year-old Frances Ellerby finds herself in a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in the middle of Miami’s Biscayne Bay. It’s the first time the Atlanta native has been out on the open water, and she’s captivated.

On the dock of a stilt house, with the dazzling skyline in the distance and the unknowable ocean beneath her, she meets the house’s owner, Dennis DuVal—and a new future reveals itself—one of marriage, motherhood, and the challenges of holding onto love in an era of unpredictable change for Miami.

“A deeply engrossing tale of love, family, friendship, and motherhood, Stiltsville is both an elegantly crafted work of art and a great read.” —New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld

“A wise and loving portrait of a marriage. . . . Susanna Daniel writes beautifully of matters of the heart.” —New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh

“Luminous. . . . A work of tremendous maturity, empathy, and humanity.” —New York Times bestselling author Dani Shapiro



“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.” —Award–winning author Hannah Tinti

“This lyrically written work, which follows the ebb and flow of a long marriage, is just intimate enough to draw the reader close. . . . Captivating.” —Denver Post

“This soulful novel will inspire you to reflect on your own definitions of house, home, and what really makes a couple close.” —Redbook

Genre: Fiction / Literary (fancy, right?)