The Cuban Heiress

Cleeton (Our Last Days in Barcelona) places two well-realized fictional women aboard a boat doomed by history. As the SS Morro Castle’s shipwreck off the coast of New Jersey in 1934 has largely faded from cultural memory, most listeners will be left to experience Elena and Catherine’s intrigues without the anticipatory tension of, say, a story set on the Titanic. The audiobook’s use of skilled narrators for Elena, presumed dead and seeking revenge on her Bluebeard-esque ex-husband, and Catherine, posing as an heiress and apparently engaged to that very man, encourages listeners’ sympathy and investment in their causes. Frankie Corzo is exemplary as Elena, audibly devastated by her losses and furiously intent on her purpose. Rachel L. Jacobs has less defined motives in voicing Catherine’s chapters but delivers fantastic banter as she flirts with another passenger who, like her, has an eye for wealthy marks. Great narration doesn’t prevent the plot transition from personal scheming to naval disaster from feeling too sudden, or a late revelation from undercutting the earlier suspense of characters trapped at sea with a murderer.