COVID-inspired novel plays up Miami Beach real estate scene

Lifestyle

By Mackenzie Dawson

May 20, 2023 | 8:16am

In “North Bay Road,” a new novel by Richard Kirshenbaum, an NYC stylist named Liz is stunned when she receives a strange letter from a Miami lawyer.

The letter informs her that she’s just inherited an estate in Miami, left to her by Elsa Sloan Barrett, a woman she’s never met.

The catch? She has to move to Miami and live in the estate for six months and a day to claim Florida residency, at which point she can decide whether or not to sell it.

As it’s the middle of the pandemic and Liz is out of work, she takes the plunge and heads south.

The estate is crumbling but majestic, an old Mediterranean mansion on Miami’s famous North Bay Road. As Liz tries to solve the mystery of her inheritance, she gets to know a vibrant new city — and her famous pop star neighbor, to boot. 

Kirshenbaum, who is CEO of boutique branding agency NSG/SWAT, got the inspiration for the novel when he and his family decamped to Miami during the pandemic and rented a house on North Bay Road. 

“One day I noticed a door next to the staircase. I opened the door and there was this 1920s service elevator, pulley style, and it was painted in chinoiserie,” he says.

“It just seemed so mysterious. I kept looking at the elevator and thinking about the days that people used those kinds of things.”

The city itself has been a part of his life since childhood when his grandparents lived there — the inclusion of the city as its own character in the novel felt like a natural fit. 

“I grew up going to Miami and I’ve seen the cultural change,” he says, writing lovingly of this “sunny place for shady people.”

“I used to visit my grandparents and my grandfather used to walk me down Collins ave., where there used to be burlesque dancers! I remember spotting Meyer Lansky walking his dog outside the Fontainebleau.”

“It has embraced so many different cultures. Everyone has brought something different to it through architecture, design, food, etc. There’s a vibrancy and a creativity to it.”