A House. Three Sisters. A Lot of Secrets. By Ivy Cassidy (aka Melissa Bourbon)

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm delighted to welcome Ivy aka Melissa Bourbon to the blog today! Aside from writing cozy mysteries, she teaches many wonderful online classes and is a whiz at explaining Pinterest to writers. Welcome Ivy!

IVY CASSIDY: First, let me just say how happy I am to be here with the Jungle Red Writers. Truly. If you’d told me years ago that I’d be talking about magical houses and ancestral secrets on this blog, I would have said, “Heck yeah! Sign me up!”

When I started writing House of Spells and Secrets, I thought I was writing a story about three sisters coming home after their mother’s death. And I was. But I also knew I wanted a house that had almost equal billing and opinions of its own because I love an old house with history. 

Swallow Hall sits on the Chesapeake Bay on fictional Bird Island. It's crumbling a bit, it’s moody, and it's watchful. As I was writing it, I kind of envisioned the Winchester Mystery House in Santa Clara, California, a place where doorways lead to nowhere, windows are upside down, and everything is topsy-turvy. Swallow Hall is the kind of place that holds drafts in its hallways and secrets in its walls. It’s not haunted in a “boo!” kind of way. It’s haunted in the way families are haunted…by what was never said, by what was buried for protection, and by love that inevitably led to loss.

The novel follows triplets—Rowan, Caraline, and Saoirse—who return to their mother’s childhood home…a home they never even knew about, complete with a grandmother they'd never met. 

There they discover inherited magic.

This isn't a cauldron-stirring, sparkly wand kind of magic. It's the kind of magic that exists deep inside. It's inherited magic that comes from Biddy Early, who was a real person and the last woman tried for witchcraft in Ireland in the 1850s. It's the kind of magic that shows up as intuition…as knowing. It's like that tightening in your chest when something is wrong.

Rowan (my point-of-view sister) hasn't discovered her magic yet. She tastes things,… but what kind of magic is that? Caraline is a kitchen witch. She processes life through flour and fire. And Saoirse, a green witch, is most at home in her apothecary and with her plants.

Together, the three sisters are stronger. Apart, they’re…complicated. 

At its heart, this book is about inheritance, not just of a mysterious house, but of expectation, of legacy, and of power you didn’t ask for but can’t turn your back on.

I didn’t grow up in a magical manor on the Bay (sadly), but I do understand what it feels like to come back to a place and see it differently. To realize that the stories you were told as a child were edited versions. To recognize that the women who came before you were carrying more than they let on.

That’s the space I love to write in.

My Ivy Cassidy books lean into magical realism, which for me means the magic never overwhelms the emotion. Rather, it supports it. Maybe grief feels bigger or love feels more layered. And in the case of House of Spells and Secrets, the past doesn’t stay politely tucked away. It breathes and pulses with life. 

And then there's the Chesapeake Bay setting! I think that water keeps secrets. Tides pull things out and drag other things under. There's a real island on the Chesapeake Bay that's sinking (Tangier Island in Virginia) and that was a great inspiration for Bird Island and Swallow Hall. It felt like the perfect backdrop for a story about these sisters discovering their truth, whether they're ready for it or not.

Ultimately, House of Spells and Secrets is about three sisters coming home and discovering  family, history, magic, and themselves. 

I’m curious. Do you love a house with a little personality? Do you believe places remember us? Or are we the ones doing the remembering?

I can’t wait to hear what you think and for you to dig into House of Spells and Secrets!

About Ivy Cassidy: 

Ivy Cassidy writes stories steeped in whispered legends, ancestral secrets, and the quiet magic, all woven into the threads of everyday life. Her novels explore generational bonds, intuitive women, and the unseen forces that shape who we become.

Also known as Melissa Bourbon, Ivy leans more deeply into magical realism and emotional resonance, crafting stories where the past meets the present and long-buried secrets rise, steady and inevitable.

When she’s not writing, she’s walking her dogs, sipping something warm, and dreaming up stories with a soft shimmer around the edges.

Breakfast

 LUCY BURDETTE: Most days I eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast--with oat milk and sometimes bananas. Or blueberries if they are in season.

I certainly don't order cereal if I'm out to eat. On New Year's day, this was my fried chicken and gravy on waffles, bloody Mary in the background. Once a year, I figure I can get away that.

But on vacation, I cut loose and eat large. 

Croissants in Paris...

Eggs benedict in Dublin...

In Australia, breakfast was really large. Here's the plate we were served in one of our B and B's:

Isn't that gorgeous? In case you can't tell, it includes fried tomatoes, English bacon, sauteed mushrooms, and eggs on wilted spinach and toast. This turned out to be the standard "brekkie" combination in Australia, and one of the best I've ever had.

There was a stretch of a few days when John and I decided we must cut back. We ate corn flakes until we ran out of them, and then bought a box of Australian granola. 

John to me the next morning: "This is the worst cereal I've ever eaten."

I took a mouthful--chewy like a cud, and pasty, too. We ground our way through our bowls, but I had to agree.

Then I thought to read the directions on the box: Cook for five minutes in water to cover. 

Imagine eating raw steel cut oatmeal and you'll get the picture. We threw that out and went back to bacon and eggs.

What's for breakfast at your house Reds? Do you change the menu and step out when you're traveling?

The Key West Cemetery by Barbara Ross

LUCY BURDETTE: I should be traveling home today and hopefully I am, but I asked my pal Barbara Ross if I could share her wonderful post about the Key West cemetery for your reading pleasure. You'll remember her as the author of the delightful Maine Clambake mystery series, but she also shares my love for Key West. Welcome back Barb!

BARBARA ROSS: The cemetery in Key West is a spot most tourists visit. It’s best known for its above-ground graves, like in New Orleans, and the light-hearted epitaphs of some its inhabitants, including the tombstones that say, “I told you I was sick,” “I’m just resting my eyes,” “If you’re reading this, you desperately need a hobby,” “I always wanted a little plot of land in Key West,” and “Devoted fan of singer Julio Iglesais.”

The cemetery was founded in 1847, after the previous burial grounds were washed away in a hurricane, though some of the graves, brought there from the earlier cemeteries, are older. Containing approximately 100,000 graves, more than three times the living population of Key West, the still-active cemetery is the only game in town, the final resting place for people of all religions, races, occupations and classes.

In addition to the regular walking tours, three times a year, the Historic Florida Keys Foundation offers a “Cemetery Stroll,” as a fundraiser. Living interpreters, often with a connection to the dead, tell the stories of some of the people buried there. Bill and I took one of those tours in March. There are so many interesting people buried in the cemetery, you can take these tours multiple times.

Here are just a few of the fascinating people whose stories we heard on our tour..

Sandy Cornish



Sandy Cornish was born a slave in 1793. In 1839, he was able to buy his freedom for $3000. His emancipation papers were burned in a fire that swept through the wooden buildings of the city of Port Leon in the Florida panhandle where he lived and worked. Unable to prove his status as a free man, when slave traders tried to take him to the market in New Orleans, he gathered a crowd in a square in Port Leon and publicly maimed himself, cutting his Achilles tendon, stabbing himself in the hip with a knife, and cutting off a finger. Worthless as a slave, he and his wife Lillah, whose freedom they had also purchased, moved to Key West. They founded a farm and orchard on the land where our rented house now stands and prospered, becoming one of the wealthiest couples in the city. Sandy Cornish founded the Cornish Chapel of the AME Methodist Church. The church houses a thriving congregation today.

The exact location of Sandy Cornish’s grave in the Key West Cemetery has been lost to history, so a memorial was recently erected. The story of Cornish’s life was told by well-known local singer Wilhelmina Lopez-Martin, who sang the intro and the outro.

William Curry



William Curry arrived in Key West penniless from Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas in 1837. He died as Florida’s first millionaire. He had many enterprises, but made the bulk of his fortune wrecking, salvaging goods from ships that wrecked in the treacherous waters of the Keys. This is how many early Key West fortunes were made. You can tour and even stay in The Curry Mansion, which is a Bed and Breakfast today.

On the Cemetery Stroll, William Curry’s story was told by Clinton Curry, a distant relative who still lives in Key West.

The Watlington Family Plot



Captain Francis Watlington and his wife Emeline raised their nine daughters in the house that is now the Oldest House Museum in Key West. Though Key West stayed with the Union in the Civil War, Captain Watlington joined the Confederate Navy. After the war, he lived principally in New York City, though he returned to Key West in his final years to be nursed by his youngest daughter, Lily, who had similarly cared for her mother and two of her sisters. She died in 1936. Earl Johnson was the last descendant to live in the house until his death in 1972, meaning the house was continuously lived in by one family for around a hundred and forty years.

The Watlington family’s story was told by Karl Reutling, a docent and historian at the Oldest House.

The Adderlys



George and Olivia Adderly immigrated separately from the Bahamas in 1890 and married soon after. They purchased land on Vaca Key which is now part of the City of Marathon. They built their home out of tabby, a kind of concrete made by burning shells to extract the lime. Incredibly the home still stands today, despite hurricanes and the punishing tropical climate, and you can tour it. The Adderlys attracted a Bahamanian community around them that thrived on sponge-fishing. When Henry Flagler built his railroad to Key West and needed a right of way over the Adderly land, George Adderly, a literate, but otherwise unadvantaged black man, went toe-to-toe with the richest and most powerful man in Florida, and demanded a station stop at Vaca Key in return. Flagler acquiesced. The stop meant the men of the little settlement could more easily move their sponges to market in Key West, while the women made money selling garden produce and baked goods to rail workers and travelers at the stop.

The Adderly’s stories were told by Key West City Commissioner Clayton Lopez and Phyllis LeConte.

Rosa and Mary Navarro



One of the most photographed graves in the Key West Cemetery are the mother and child angels at the graves of Mary and Rosa Navarro, which have recently been beautifully restored. The inscription on Mary Navarro’s statue says, “To the sacred memory of a brokenhearted mother.” The Navarros made their money in cigar-making and at the turn of the twentieth century, their interests took them to Manhattan. Rosa Navarro died in a fall from their apartment window when she was nine. Though her mother lived four years longer, she never recovered, following her daughter in death in 1907.

The Navarro’s story was told by Ron Wampler, and Diane Silvia, Executive Director of the Historic Florida Keys Foundation which is responsible for the restoration.

The stories in the Key West Cemetery, of fortunes made and lost in wrecking, farming, sponging, and cigar-making, of lives of triumph and tragedy, are the stories of the history of Key West. Even the tongue-in-cheek inscriptions I quoted at the top are a part of the irreverent atmosphere of the island. I’ve included just a few of the fascinating lives we learned about on the tour.

Readers: Do you ever walk in or visit cemeteries? What have you seen and learned?

[All photos in this post are by Bill Carito. If you like them and want to see more, you can friend him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bcarito and follow him on Instagram at billcarito and bill.carito.colorphotos.]