Queen of the Underworld

Fresh from journalism school, perky Emma Gant arrives in South Florida in 1959 to become a byline writer for the MIAMI STAR. With a career and a married, older boyfriend, this gal is ahead of her time. Narrator Carrington MacDuffie skillfully paints a picture of Emma: young but self-assured, inexperienced but not afraid to step out in a man's world, beautiful but self-conscious about her worn-down shoes. MacDuffie voices most of the colorful characters with subtlety but provides picturesque Hispanic accents for the many Cubans fleeing Castro. She depicts an up-and-coming writer who sees the world as her oyster. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

October 10, 2005
In the summer of 1959, plucky North Carolinian Emma Gant escapes overbearing parents to begin her career as a reporter at the Miami Star
. Lodged at the colorful Julia Tuttle Hotel (a fictional Florida property named after Miami's real-life founder), Emma meets a group of Cuban families who've recently fled Fidel Castro. Emma spends her days learning the ropes as a reporter and her nights bantering (in broken Spanish) with the eclectic group of exiles. She also arranges rendezvous with her married lover, Paul, an innkeeper largely responsible for her decision to move South. Godwin, a three-time National Book Award nominee, taps into her experiences as a fledgling Florida journalist to render a tale whose ambling, amiable plot is redeemed by a cast of memorable characters. Among them are an arms-smuggling dentist, a diminutive German perfumer, a nefarious reporter with an "overall gleaming effect," and a distinguished academic who flees Cuba with his memoir stitched into his wife's wedding dress. Topping the list of provocative personalities is Ginevra Brown, aka the Queen of the Underworld, a former Miami madam once betrothed to a mobster. Readers who can't get enough Godwin can snap up the first installment of her two-volume memoir, The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963
, also due out this month (and reviewed on p. 44).

Multitalented actress Stephanie Zimbalist uses all her talents to paint a splashy, bizarre, deliciously zany portrait of Emma Gant, a Florida rookie newspaper reporter, and her encounters with Cuban refugees in Miami in 1959. Gant's alter ego is a wickedly portrayed ex-Miami madam, mistress of a mobster and known as The Queen of the Underworld. Stephanie Zimbalist adds spice and sparkle, as well as a sense of seriousness and empathy for the fleeing Cubans, to a sprawling, sometimes unwieldy, plot. Her voices, including impeccably accented Spanish and that of the narrator (three-time National Book Award nominee Godwin herself, thinly disguised) ring true. M.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine