Coconut Grove Chronicles - Paperback

by Matthew Bamberg (Author)

Embark on a journey through Florida, where eccentricity reigns supreme, and fiction meets reality in the polar opposite worlds of tradition and alternative cultures. Narrated through the senses, boy Marvin searches beyond self-doubt, as he hears his mother, Eleanor, make dubious claims to clients of her booming astrology practice, which she offers to the 1970s Coconut Grove's burgeoning diverse community.

Each story chronicles the wild, uncontrollable, times-are-a-changin' beat of South Florida's counterculture revolution. Marvin, fixated on the cast of quirky, complex voices that tangle, twist, and turn much like the roots of the mangrove thatch that line the shores of Biscayne Bay.

Marvin's obsession with the authentic science of whirling hurricanes nearby clears his head of a seemingly evil stepsister, the pseudo-science that depends on charting the heavens. The former has Marvin creating scenarios of weather patterns that would be favorable for a hurricane to ram right into Coconut Grove. The latter amplifies through homophobic taunts of a former Miss Oklahoma, launching Marvin into a persistent fear that his mother charts the cosmos that reveals his secret sexuality.

Told with wild action and kicky dialogue, Coconut Grove Chronicles features Mother Eleanor's manipulation of cosmic values, best childhood friend Dominique's Cuban Catholicism, Grandma Nina's collection of Quaaludes, and brother Logan's palmistry readings for South Beach surfer girls. Will he be forever trapped between the pull of the unconventional and the order of the scientific world?