Lumina
In the summer of 1928, Lumina, known as the “Palace of Light,” is only reachable from Wilmington, North Carolina by trolley car or boat, where it occupies the entire southern tip of Wrightsville Beach. The grandest beach pavilion on the East Coast creates the backdrop for this fictional tale of young people from all walks of life falling in love—not only with each other but with Lumina itself, where everything is magic from eight until midnight on Saturday nights.
LUMINA is a story about change. Change in attitudes in a decadent time—of the flappers, the new jazz, National Prohibition, the invisible black population, and modern conveniences—but it’s also a love story. Lit by over 6,000 lights, Lumina creates a magical backdrop for romance. The story is told in alternating letters from twenty-year-old Kip Meeks and from diary entries of his naïve sister, seventeen-year- old Sylvie, who both unexpectedly meet and fall in love with people at Lumina whom they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. For Kip, it’s Catherine Carmichael, an heiress with a secret, and for young Sylvie, it’s Catherine’s older brother, the mysterious Clifton. Kip and Sylvie quickly learn that people aren’t always who they appear to be.
Fast forward ninety years to summer 2018. While going through her late mother Sylvie’s possessions, Anne Borden Montgomery (known from the pages of Flinn’s A Girl Like That) discovers an unpublished manuscript, a novel, compiled from her mother’s diary and her uncle’s letters. AB shares the story on her own front porch with her eager friends, Mr. May, Elle, and Nate, who take turns reading the story aloud, finding interesting parallels in their own lives while becoming acquainted with “new” old friends.
“Captivating from the first page, Mary Flinn weaves intrigue with romance in her latest novel, Lumina. Her characters shimmer like the ocean in this tale of family secrets and old loves caught up in a wave of mystery.”
~ Laura Wharton, award-winning author of In Julia’s Garden and Leaving Lukens
“Hollywood is dying to tell stories like this one. The sparkling lights of Lumina, the music wafting out onto the beach, the dazzling dresses, the smell of bathtub gin, the Southern charm, and the family secrets that won’t lay dying—they are all here, making The Great Gatsby look like child’s play.”
~ Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of When Teddy Came to Town
“Mary Flinn’s masterful novel, LUMINA, depicts such endearing and rich characters that the reader is swept seamlessly back and forth between the worlds of her charming modern-day misfits and the end of the Roaring Twenties where the book’s namesake beachfront dance pavilion is the center of the summer social scene among the novel’s characters. The story, told beautifully through old letters and a diary, transcends the generations and is as timeless as the pull and power of family, friendships, and love. LUMINA is pure magic.”
~Sabrina Stephens, Day Banker, Night Writer, Author of Banker’s Trust and Canned Good
Reviews
“Lumina” by Mary Flinn is set in 1928 in Wilmington, North Carolina. The story is presented in diary format from siblings Kip and Sylvie, with the letters from Kip being written to his home- bound buddy about his summer at home from college.
The story’s main focus is on Lumina, a glamorous beach pavilion in Wilmington that many young folks attended during the summer; they came for socialization and even a little romance as well. Kip is home from college and Sylvie is awaiting news from her college of choice in hopes of attending that fall. The story begins with Kip and Sylvie attending the dance at Lumina. Straightaway, Catherine Carmichael catches Kip’s eye. Catherine is from a very well-to-do family, and anyone would be correct in saying that she is out of his league. Despite her wealth, she is a reserved girl with a scarred past. Sylvie catches the eye of Catherine’s brother, Clifton, a more outgoing man with a sketchy past himself. Each week at Lumina brings Kip, Sylvie, and their friends new adventures, and brings Kip and Catherine closer together.
A main theme in “Lumina” is love; there are many relationships that form throughout the story, and love is shown in different ways among the characters. Another theme is change. These characters are in the “Roaring ‘20’s”, and women are advocating for more rights, and are becoming more adventurous—physically and sexually. Change is also prevalent with the black population as well, with slavery having ended some time ago, but the “ill-feelings” toward this different group of people still showing strong and full of hatred among many.
In some ways, the culture in the 1920s is much different than it is for us presently, such as needing a chaperone for dates, people caring what others think of them, and the idea of becoming pregnant out of wedlock being a big no-no, especially for your family’s reputation. Flinn intertwined both fact and fiction; I love reading historical fiction because I feel like I’m learning something as well as enjoying the story. The artwork on the cover was fitting to the story in the design of the picture and appearance of the lady shown.
Overall, I felt this was a peaceful love story between many of the characters, but also had mystery and death interspersed. Mary Flinn has a way of gripping you on the first page that keeps you glued to every chapter, as each one explains more of the story – and not until the very end do you find out the complete truth of it all. I would highly recommend “Lumina” to those who enjoy stories from the nation’s past, particularly in the southern region, and to readers who want a good story that will keep you captivated and in awe with every visit to Lumina, the “Palace of Light.”
~ Rachel Dehning for Reader Views (8/19)
The Roaring ’20s come alive through the pages of an old yellowed manuscript that reveals a long-buried, sordid tale of love and betrayal among society’s finest in Wilmington, North Carolina.
In Flinn’s (Allegiance, 2016, etc.) cleverly designed novel within a novel, four friends come together on Anne Borden “AB” Montgomery’s front porch to read a story written in 1930 and recently found among some of AB’s old papers. Attached to the manuscript was a letter from its author, Perry Whitmore, to AB’s mother, Sylvie Meeks. Perry, a friend of Sylvie’s brother Kip, explains that he composed the novel from letters he received from Kip during the summer of 1928 and Sylvie’s diary (given to Kip in 1929) covering the same period. Kip and Sylvie provide the manuscript’s alternating voices. AB and her three companions (80-year-old Bernard May and 30-somethings Elle McLarin and Nate Aldridge) take turns reading Perry’s novel aloud over successive summer nights. It begins when Sylvie and Kip go to a Saturday night dance at Lumina, the Wrightsville Beach pavilion “Palace of Light,” in May 1928. They run into Catherine and Clifton Carmichael, another sibling duo, whom they have known since childhood. The Carmichaels, sitting at the top of Wilmington aristocracy, and the Meeks, merely a family of means, move in different circles. But this fateful summer, the magic of music and dancing leads to risky romance—and violence. Flinn’s evocative prose re-creates the era: “Cicadas cranked up their song as a backdrop to the city noises, of the trolley bell clanging, train whistles blowing, automobiles rumbling along, dogs barking, and the occasional clip-clopping of a horse-drawn cart.” She captures the exuberance of the decade’s dance, fashion, and changing social conventions as well as the more sinister underbelly of the Jim Crow South. Catherine’s sordid backstory, only partially disclosed before the manuscript’s dramatic denouement, skirts the edges of credulity but nonetheless packs a shocking punch. The evolving relationships between AB and Bernard and Elle and Nate create a satisfying narrative symmetry between the two storylines—one past and the other contemporary.
An engaging, often tender tale filled with vibrant period details.
~ Kirkus Reviews
New Novel Recalls Romance at Roaring Twenties Dance Pavilion
In her latest novel, Lumina, North Carolina author Mary Flinn takes readers on a journey back in time. Lumina was a beautiful beach pavilion where dances were held every Saturday night for the first half of the twentieth century in Wilmington, North Carolina. Now Flinn returns us to the days of the Roaring Twenties when young ladies wore beaded skirts and young men covertly sipped whiskey when the dance matron wasn’t looking. It was an era of cultural change, marked by the first real sexual revolution, Prohibition, the introduction of jazz, and a time when music formed a bond for many whites and African-Americans.
Readers of Mary Flinn’s former novels will enjoy this chance to be enmeshed once again in her world. Although Lumina is her first historical romance, old favorite characters make their appearance in the form of Elle McLarin and some of her friends—Nate, Anne Borden Montgomery (AB), and Mr. May—from A Girl Like That. The story begins when Anne Borden finds a novel based on her mother’s diary and her uncle’s letters from the summer of 1928. The four friends begin a routine of sitting on Anne Borden’s porch and reading the novel out loud. As they do so, readers get alternate glimpses of the changes in the modern-day characters’ world while also hearing the endearing, but at times shocking, tale of Anne Borden’s uncle Kip and her mother Sylvie and the summer that changed their lives.
At the center of it all is Lumina, the magnificent dance pavilion built on Wilmington’s Wrightsville Beach. Known as the “Palace of Light,” it was the place to be on a Saturday night. As Kip describes it in the novel, “Lumina is the great equalizer for young people who are out for a bit of fun and to celebrate the happiness of youth. The best of the bands come there to play for the summer and thousands of people from all walks of life—tourists and locals, middle-class and aristocrats alike, arrive to dance the evening away on a Saturday night. Many a romance has been born at Lumina, I’ll tell you.” It is also a place for excitement and escapism. Kip says at one point in the novel, referring to the hours between eight and midnight, “We were perfect for four more hours.” It was a time when life seemed perfect.
It was also a time when you could meet anyone at the dances. Kip and Sylvie come from a middle class family. Their father owns a clothing store, but at Lumina they have a chance to rub elbows with the Carmichaels—brother and sister Clifton and Catherine—among the wealthiest people in North Carolina, friends of the Vanderbilts, and both attractive and charming, at least on the surface. Kip is instantly smitten with Catherine and begins a whirlwind romance with her. Clifton latches on to Sylvie, who can’t believe such a handsome gentleman is interested in her.
But both Clifton and Catherine have their demons, and as the novel progresses, secrets are revealed that threaten the young couples’ relationships.
Lumina is the perfect book to escape into, and yet it is serious fiction, as serious as anything Fitzgerald wrote. There’s a villain to rival Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff, and a sense of social injustice as strong as that of To Kill a Mockingbird. There are pleasant evenings spent on a porch that recall a past when neighbors actually took the time to speak to each other. There are fast cars and short skirts and a sense that the world is changing, no matter how much the characters wish they could freeze time.
Every page is vibrant with life, longing, and romance, and Flinn knows how to pace the story so readers can come up for air when things get too intense, while constantly keeping us in suspense.
My favorite section was near the end when The Shag—the great dance of the age—is introduced following the Feast of Pirates. It’s a perfect build-up to the climax that effortlessly blends history and fiction. If you’re not familiar with the Shag, it may not sound like a big deal, but when you read the novel, you’ll get goosebumps during these scenes. Flinn knows how to pace her story so that readers find themselves helplessly caught up in the excitement as if riding a rollercoaster. Time can’t be frozen, but these scenes in the novel become so intense they are permanently etched in the reader’s memory as golden moments to remember. Few novelists have this skill, and while Flinn makes it all look effortless, it is the result of years of mastering her craft.
Hollywood is dying to tell stories like this one. The sparkling lights of Lumina, the music wafting out onto the beach, the dazzling dresses, the smell of bathtub gin, the Southern charm, and the family secrets that won’t lay dying—they are all here, making The Great Gatsby look like child’s play.
If you want a magical, romantic, reading experience, Lumina will enthrall you.
~ Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and When Teddy Came to Town