First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. To participate, share the opening paragraph or two of a book you've decided to read or have already started reading, based on that paragraph. I've read several reviews and posts about this book and was intrigued by it. When I saw it at a local second-hand book shop, I picked it up and started reading it and, the next thing I knew, I'd read 10 pages!
Visit Bibliophile by the Sea for Diane's selection this week and for links to the other participants. You'll get some good book titles, too!
Stiltsville
by
Susanna Daniel
1969
On a Sunday morning in late July, at the end of my first-ever visit to Miami, I took a cab from my hotel to Snapper Creek marina to join a woman named Marse Heiger, whom I’d met the day before. When I stepped out of the cab, I saw Marse standing in the well of her little fishing boat, wearing denim knee shorts and a yellow sleeveless blouse, her stiff brown hair pinned under a bandanna. She waved and gestured for me to climb into the boat. She poured me a mug of coffee from an aluminum thermos and started the engine.
“Ready?” she said. We puttered out of the marina, under a bridge from which two black boys were fishing with what looked like homemade poles, down a winding canal flanked by mangroves. The knobby, twining roots rose from the water. I sat on a cushioned bench and Marse sat in a captain’s chair at the helm. She handed me a scarf and told me to tie back my hair, which I did. We passed an egret standing stock-still on a mangrove root, then emerged from the canal into the wide, open bay. The Miami shoreline stretched out in both directions. Marse picked up speed, and each time we came down on a wave, I gripped the corner of my bench.
What do you think? Would you continue reading this book?
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