About Coconut Grove Chronicles
“The Grove was more than a village; it was a state of mind where the tropical sunshine met a counterculture upheaval.”
Spanning the bohemian pulse of Florida’s transformative 1960s and 70s, Miami’s oldest community was a sultry sanctuary for artists, rebels, and pleasure seekers. In Coconut Grove Chronicles, author and photographer Matthew Bamberg captures the vibe of an era that defined a generation, blending raw reality with a fictional narrative of paradoxes.
Beginning his working life in the gritty heart of a neighborhood head shop, salesboy Marvin was quickly schooled in the underground scene. Reaching inside glittering glass showcases to hawk glass hash pipes and sterling coke spoons, he detailed the paraphernalia like an underground physician’s desk reference. Simultaneously, his interest led him deep into the sciences—a paradox that posed profound identity challenges.
When his friendship with a charismatic Cuban girl leads him into the eye of a hurricane, it takes an unlikely alliance between his best friend and his mother—two women from vastly different worlds—to pull him back from the brink and save his future.
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Author Bio:
Matthew Bamberg has a compelling career that combines interdisciplinary texts and images to create unique products in literature and the arts. He began as a meteorologist conducting groundbreaking cloud-seeding experiments in South Florida for NOAA, an experience that transformed his ideas in science and pseudoscience.
Adding to his counterculture experiences, he peppers his evocative literary fiction with retro settings, such as mid-century Coconut Grove.
Transitioning to arts education in the Bay Area, Bamberg eventually merged writing and photography, becoming a celebrated nonfiction author, photojournalist, and "The Desert Sun" columnist, and author of a dozen how-to photography books, including "Digital Art Photography for Dummies" (Wiley, 2006).
A recent Delphi Award recipient for his teaching at National University, Bamberg, continues to blend storytelling and visual artistry in his contemporary work.