“In this wise and luminous novel, Susanna Daniel does something truly rare: she creates characters so real that you feel they’ve entered the very room where you sit reading. Before you know it, they’ve also entered your heart, and are breaking it. Stiltsville is a work of tremendous maturity, empathy and humanity.” - Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion and Black and White
“Like the narrator of this wonderful novel I fell in love in the opening pages of Stiltsville. There was nothing I wanted more than to spend time in the company of these vivid characters and keep reading Susanna Daniel’s lovely, lucid prose. Sadly, like all good books, this one came to an end-for me at two in the morning. Happily I can go back and be transported all over again. Many readers, I’m sure, will follow me.” - Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
“Set against the wild and changeable landscape of South Florida, Stiltsville is a wise and loving portrait of a marriage, written with keen insight into the ways two lives grow together over the years. This is a rare first novel. Susanna Daniel writes beautifully of matters of the heart.” - Jennifer Haigh, author of The Condition, Baker Towers, and Mrs. Kimble
“I fell in love with Susanna Daniel’s characters, Dennis and Frances. The dialogue, the pacing, and the tenderness between this married couple is so authentic and true. But it’s the setting of Florida, and especially the place that is Stiltsville, that literally elevates this story to magic.” - Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief
“In this wise and luminous novel, Susanna Daniel does something truly rare: she creates characters so real that you feel they’ve entered the very room where you sit reading. Before you know it, they’ve also entered your heart, and are breaking it…. A work of tremendous maturity, empathy and humanity.” - Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion and Black and White
“Miami, for all its charms, can sometimes play hard to get. The same might be said for Susanna Daniel’s debut novel, which takes its time rising and revealing its considerable magic. . . . Frances gets caught up in the currents of life, and so do we. . . . Daniel renders Frances and her family so authentically, their dynamics and quirks come to feel utterly familiar and endearing. Deceptively placid Stiltsville reminds us, like Frances, to appreciate the small but potent magic of everyday life.” - Ellen Kanner, Miami Herald
“Stiltsville is a love story but not one that should be mistaken for a romance. This lyrically written work, which follows the ebb and flow of a long marriage, is just intimate enough to draw the reader close. It isn’t until well into the novel that your realize just how much you’ve come to care about author Susana Daniel’s narrator and her story. . . . Lovely. Daniel’s descriptions of the lives and their surroundings are nearly melodic in their unfolding; the reading experience is captivating.” - Robin Vidimos, Denver Post
“Uses lyrical story-telling to relate profound truths about the attachments we form in life-to people, to places, and to notions of who we are-and how those attachments, formed in happy times, sustain us through the hard times. . . . Daniel’s writing is lovely and unaffected, honest and open. . . . Stiltsville is a compelling portrait of a marriage, a sweet serenade to Southern Florida, and a moving account of a woman’s life.” - Nina Sankovitch, Huffington Post
“Both structurally and in tone, the book recalls linked short-story collections such as Alice Munro’s The Beggar Maid, following one character chronologically through a long period. Each piece can stand alone, but the whole is enriched when they are read together. . . . Lovely.” - Laura C.J. Owen, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A quietly remarkable novel. . . . Reminiscent of Marilynn Robinson’s Home.” - Scott Eyman, Palm Beach Post
“[Daniel] has written that rare thing, a novel that conveys the drama in the everyday lives of good, normal people. . . . I can’t quite identify the magic by which Daniel maintains narrative tension and drive. . . . It has something to do with her clear, detailed view of Frances’ life, but mostly, I think, it lies in the plain, faintly lyrical prose, which rises quietly to a surprising crescendo of well-earned feeling at the end.” - Chauncey Mabe, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“A deeply engrossing tale of love, family, friendship, and motherhood, Stiltsville is both an elegantly crafted work of art and a great read. The love story effortlessly spans decades, and the characters are as real and vivid as the novel’s South Florida backdrop. Susanna Daniel is an extraordinary writer.” - Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep and American Wife
“I fell in love in the opening pages of Stiltsville. There was nothing I wanted more than to spend time in the company of these vivid characters and keep reading Susanna Daniel’s lovely, lucid prose.” - Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
“The author’s organization of the story into seven sections, each of which recounts a seminal year in Miami history and Frances’ life, is a surprisingly successful technique for creating suspense in a book characterized by lushly descriptive and complex writing. . . . Written with great delicacy and discretion. This promising first novel will appeal to readers of family stories, literary fiction, and southern writing.” - Ellen Loughran, Booklist
“With its lush flora and constant sun, South Florida is the true star of Daniel’s exquisite debut, which follows a marriage over the course of 30 years. . . . Beautifully told from Frances’s pensive, sharp perspective. . . . Drawing inexorably toward a moving resolution.” - Publishers Weekly
“This soulful novel will inspire you to reflect on your own definitions of house, home, and what really makes a couple close.” - Redbook
“Daniel masterfully evokes the sticky Miami heat and refreshing ocean breezes, but there is so much more to these pages than fetching seaside images. Daniel’s characters are emotionally complex and so believable that Stiltsville almost reads as a memoir rather than a work of fiction. . . . Daniel strikes a perfect balance of wit, weakness and tenderness.” - BookPage