The Flamingo Motel

Mermaid Beach is a tiny Florida coastal town, the kind of place tourists drive through on their way to somewhere bigger — maybe stopping for gas or a bite to eat — but never staying long. But when a hurricane damages the Mermaid Beach motel her parents left her, Casey Johnson takes the opportunity to leave behind a broken relationship, the high cost of big city living, and a life she no longer finds satisfying and return to her hometown. Before long, she’s knee-deep in renovations to the Flamingo Motel thanks to the town’s unofficial “mayor,” who may or may not be a retired gangster. Before she’s even open, she has her first guest, a shaggy biker whose tattoos and death metal T-shirts are camouflage for the good guy he turns out to be.

The first in a new series about the lives and loves of Mermaid Beach residents, Flamingo Motel is a loving homage to the beach towns and mom and pop guest houses  still struggling to exist in the days of the  franchise motel chains that encrust I-95 like barnacles.