Introduction

A legendary hotel on the Pacific becomes a haven where dreams, love, and a beguiling mystery come alive.

1958. Kate Morgan, tethered to her family’s failing San Francisco restaurant, is looking for an escape. She gets her chance by honoring a cryptic plea from her grandfather: find the beautiful stranger. The search takes her to Hotel del Coronado, the beachfront landmark on the Southern California coast where filming is underway on the movie Some Like It Hot.

For a movie lover like Kate, it’s a fantasy come true. So is the offer of a position at the glamorous hotel. And a new romance is making her heart beat just as fast. But as sure as she is that Coronado is her future, Kate discovers it’s also where the ghosts of the past have come to stay. Sixty years ago a guest died tragically, and she still haunts the hotel’s halls.

As the lives of two women—generations apart—intertwine, Kate’s courageous journey could change more than she ever imagined. And with Coronado wending its way through her soul, she must follow her dreams…wherever they may lead.

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Excerpt

THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS by CAMILLE DI MAIO

Prologue

November 28, 1892

Tom disappeared several stations before we arrived in San Diego, which is just as well, since I have papers in my bag that will begin the process of my leaving him for good. We quarreled, and I am embarrassed to say that it was witnessed by a gentleman in our compartment. But I believe our words were vague enough that my identity, which I have gone to considerable lengths to conceal, will not come to light.

Our argument was no different from any other since I married him seven years prior. He is a drunkard and a gambler, rapidly wasting away the sizable allowance I’m given by my grandfather. And if pilfering that is not enough, my husband brings his railroad bible—a deck of cards—and swindles innocent passengers out of their money by challenging them to games of three-card monte to pass the time on the tracks.

I tried to stop him once, and the slap that befell my face left a mark that I had to conceal by dabbing cosmetics on it and fashioning my long hair to fall over that cheek. Needless to say, I never interfered again, though I managed to avoid involving myself any further in the ruses, as he would have preferred.

Tom’s abrupt departure was a greater relief than I know how to express, but it did leave me with two problems. First, he had not yet signed the documents that will dissolve our ill-fated union. And second, he absconded—perhaps intentionally—with our baggage card, and without it I was not able to retrieve the three pieces of luggage that I had checked in my name.

My real name.

I have tried for several years to escape from this monster, my most successful attempt being a feigned bout of rheumatism that sent me from Hamburg, Iowa, to San Francisco. His only contact with me was to demand more money when he’d run out of it, and I obliged with the allowance from my grandfather, forcing me to earn my own funds as a house servant. Work that I found most satisfactory after an upbringing in which I was so pampered that I never had a chance to test my own mettle.

And worth it to keep Tom from following me.

Craving the sun that regularly evaded the City by the Bay, I made my way south to Los Angeles, where I continued domestic employment, and up until last week I worked under the last name of Logan. I have received the praise of my employer, a Mrs. Grant at no. 917 South Hill Street, and after this jaunt to San Diego, it was my plan to return to what was a most generous position.

When Tom found out where I was—he could always locate me, eerily, like some villainous breed of homing pigeon—he insisted that we get out of town and find a notary to witness the signatures on our divorce papers. Why we had to leave Los Angeles to do so, I don’t know. I might be some kind of bargaining chip if he got into trouble. I had my reservations about going anywhere with him but was so desperate to finish this once and for all that I agreed to go wherever he wanted to make it come about.

Tom had heard that the Hotel del Coronado was the first building in the world to be fully electric, and for all his many faults, the man has a mind that is eager for new experiences. In fact, that is the very thing that first drew me to him—he had a hunger for life that exceeded the boundaries of Hamburg. I am sure that the island’s famed sunshine and spotless beaches were also a consideration. He never did take to the Iowa winters.

It was also the southernmost point before crossing the border.

How I would have loved to go even farther south and disappear into Mexico myself, but I fear that it would be too difficult for my grandfather’s stipend to find me there. And for all the courage I try to cultivate, I am not as brave as I wish.

Abandoned, I continued on with the journey. I am sitting now on the third floor in my hotel room overlooking the water. Tom took with him the little satchel of money that he insisted I entrust to him while I left the train car to use the ladies’ facilities, but he neglected to remember that I carried the pouch of quinine pills that relieved his early arthritis. (There is some justice, then, though maybe I’m wicked for thinking it.)

I registered here at the hotel as Mrs. Lottie A. Bernard of Detroit, grateful that they took pity on the story I told about my purse being stolen and that I would have money wired as soon as possible. A small room costs $3.80 per day, which is a reduction of their normal rate, since the busy season is not yet upon them. It includes three full meals, which I’ve been taking in both the ladies’ lounge and the magnificent Crown Room. But the debt is adding up quickly, and as my time here draws to an end, I realize that I must take care of my bill so that I do not become the ilk of my husband, who will take advantage of people at every opportunity. I had hoped—which I see now was futile—that he would meet me at the Del as originally planned and sign our divorce papers, as this location was his idea in the first place. But I have asked for him at the front desk several times a day, and each time the answer is the same—my brother, Mr. Anderson, has not yet arrived.

Of course, Tom’s name is not Mr. Anderson, and I have no brother—they are several of my fictions—but he and I had prearranged this moniker, as we are both afraid that the police will soon catch up with him if either of us reveals our true names.

Though I ache to see him behind bars, I would not embarrass those whom I love with the publicity that would no doubt spring from it.

As Tom’s desertion of me is now becoming a truth that I have accepted, I have several things to attend to if I am to avoid bringing any more scandal to my already devastated family back home.

I plan to burn my divorce documents in the little fireplace in my room so that my name will not become known by the hotel staff when I am . . . gone.

I am desperate to receive funds to cover my hotel account and have telegraphed Tom’s friend G. L. Allen, trusting that he will come to my rescue on this point. He was always a little in love with me, and it pains me to take advantage of him in this manner, but I am afraid I have no other choice. If I had married G. L. instead, I would now be the wife of a perfectly respectable bank clerk. Bored, perhaps, but at least not in peril as I am now.

Why did I not heed the warnings of my dear family when Tom appeared, dazzling and blazing?

My stomach groans, and I double over in pain for the fourth time today. The staff here is quite worried about me, and they have begged on more than one occasion to let them call a physician. But I told them that I have cancer of the stomach, a lie easily believed by the very real weakness that has overtaken me and the sallowness that has been carved into my once-proud cheekbones. I visited the hotel pharmacy looking for some easy relief but was met, oddly, by a real estate agent who offices in the shared space. He did offer me some whiskey, and I have drunk most of that, with the effect that it dulled the pain but failed to take it away entirely. It did, however, confuse my senses, enough that I slipped while entering the bathtub and had to call upon the housemaid to help me out and dry my hair. She insisted once again that we call the physician, but I do not want my true condition to be found out. It would be unseemly, I know, for someone of my young age of twenty-four to be dying of cancer, and he might discover what I am hoping to hide:

That I am carrying Tom’s child—the result of a brief, insistent visit when he first found me a couple of months ago. And if he discovers my condition, there is no way he will ever sign divorce papers, no matter the money involved. He would have a claim on me that could not be undone, one that could be even more profitable for him.

On my part, I cannot imagine bringing a new life into a world that breathes the same air as my insidious husband.

Already I can tell that something is wrong. The pain I feel is so overwhelming that I have begun to experience spasms where I am greatly taken over by delirium, and in those moments I fear that I may do harm to myself just to stop it from hurting. Only days ago, I visited a gun retailer on Sixth Street and purchased a .44 and a few cartridges. I exchanged a silver filigree brooch to pay for it, and the revolver now sits on my hotel nightstand. More than once I have held it in my hand, knowing that with one swift action, the pain could end. But then I think about the dear bellboy who would discover what would be left and how devastating it could be for whoever would have to clean up what are now such crisp white sheets.

I am not heartless.

If I were to go through with it, I would instead walk down to the redbrick stairs by the ocean where the water might splash away all traces of the deed and maybe even take me with its tides, and I could disappear altogether.

Perhaps in doing so I will forgo any hope I have of the eternal paradise preached in my childhood, but in exchange my ghost could haunt these luxurious halls and the fancy visitors who walk them. A shadow version of a heaven I can’t attain. I would not be an unfriendly phantom, scaring people who are here for the purpose of having a marvelous vacation. Instead I would welcome them, bidding them to enjoy their time here as much as I would have liked to, were my own personal circumstances not so tragic.

Yes, that’s it. I can wed myself to this place even as I disentangle from Tom and my vow of till death do us part. Forever walking this beach and feeling this sunshine. As much as I imagine a drifting soul can.

There would be one more advantage to tying myself here. But that is part of my story that is known only by me and by Mr. and Mrs. Alan Morgan of 753 A Avenue, just blocks away from the hotel. They still live in that little cottage—I pay regularly for someone to tell me if their whereabouts change—and though I tried to forward some funds from my earnings to them, they steadfastly refused: believing, perhaps, that I needed the money as desperately as I do.

I intended to visit them during my time here on this island, but my pain is so formidable that I am not sure I could even walk the short distance to the door at the end of their picturesque garden.

The couple holds my secret—or one part of it that I shared with them:

That this is not my first trip to Coronado. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Kate's loyalties are town between her parents, her grandfather, and her own dreams. Do you think she made the right decision in going to Coronado? Why or why not?

- We see two very different sides of Marilyn Monroe in this book: the movie star and the shy girl named Norma Jean. While she experienced that to an extreme degree, do you think that we all have versions of ourselves that we share depending on the situation? What was a time in your life where you found this especially difficult - or rewarding?

- Legend has it that the ghost of Kate Morgan is tied to the Hotel del Coronado, and the author imagines a story where her motherhood is very important to her even in the afterlife. What is a person/place/thing that you would be most likely to be attached to if you were a ghost?

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