Strabel, Thelma "The Flaming Tree"

World War 2 tale. A rather Gothic women’s romance story set in Key West and Cuba. A stranded merchant seaman whose ship had just been torpedoed in the Caribbean lands in Key West on Christmas Eve and is befriended by a wealthy young woman in town whose family has a more than a few “secrets.” Before long the seaman is working in the family’s shipyard, helping construct and man a fleet of auxiliary schooners to be used trade between mainland Florida and Cuba. When romance between the two seems to be heating up, the girl’s over-controlling grandmother (this being the South, Grandma’s known as “Miss Caroline”) tries to break the two apart. Soon thereafter the young seaman’s schooner is torpedoed in the Caribbean – but, this being a women’s story, love triumphs when he turns out on the beach at Key West again. At story’s end he has returned to the sea (it appears that he’s sailing now in North Atlantic convoys), with his now-fiancée planning their upcoming Key West wedding. Though Strabel’s story is pretty sappy overall, it does at least paint an interesting picture of wartime Havana (where several of the characters enjoy a mid-story vacation).