Walking into The Prologue, a guest apartment in the Three Stories Inn in St. Augustine, Florida, feels like strolling through a novel. Books of every possible genre are everywhere: on the shelves, countertops and cocktail tables.
“We feature different authors every month,” inn creator and owner Marie Milton says, as she welcomes me into the suite’s well-stocked kitchen, which includes a few cookbooks by the stove. In the dining room, a wallpaper depicting a fantasy forest and matching hand-painted chairs help complete the immersive wonderland feeling. Fittingly, the inn’s three apartments are called The Foreword, The Prologue and The Epilogue, each seamlessly blending vintage charm with modern glamour, plus a pinch of serenity and magic.
The story behind the storybook inn
Milton created her unconventional inn as a tribute to her late mother, whose stage four stomach cancer left her only months to live. Yet, she proved doctors wrong, beating the odds for eight more years. “My mom was an immigrant from South Korea,” Milton shares. She “stood 4 feet, 10 inches tall, and she was 70 pounds of full, hard and sensational grit,” Milton says. “She wanted to stay alive as long as she could, to be here for her kids and her grandkids. Her oncologist was always shocked that she made it as far as she did.”
There was no standard treatment for such a late-stage cancer, so Milton’s mother joined clinical trials. For several years, mother and daughter regularly traveled from St. Augustine to Houston, where the treatments were administered. “We traveled out of state one to two times a month,” Milton says. Frequent travel like this can wear out even a healthy person, let alone a frail woman undergoing chemo.
To get through, Milton’s mom imagined the two of them were going on a real journey. “Chemo makes you feel like shit, so I imagine like we’re going on a big trip all the time, just mother and daughter. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Milton says her mother used to say.
Learning to live in the moment
Milton, who was a nurse raising two little boys with her husband who was still in school, in addition to being her mother’s sole caregiver, learned to move fast to get things done. Plus, while she traveled she was taking graduate courses online to advance her nursing career, so being fast and efficient was the only way to accomplish everything she had to do in a given day. Traveling with her mother changed her, though, with one particular moment that stuck with her forever.
Milton was helping her mother settle for yet another round of chemo, once again rushing around, when her mother said, “Jeez, you always move so fast. Slow down. Take your time.” And while she didn’t explicitly say to cherish the moments we spend together, Milton realized she meant exactly that.
“My mom probably felt like the clock was ticking faster than she wanted, and by me moving fast, I did not want to make it seem like the world was moving fast for her either,” Milton says. So from that moment on, she started to slow down.
“I made the most of our hotel journeys, stopping along the way for the beautiful skies, taking in the wide-open skies of Texas, with my little mama by my side,” she says. “The clock stood still for us, and we were in our world, mother and daughter, living, being ever so and eternally present.” The two went on to create the stories of their travels and form memories that would last long after one of them was gone.
Before she departed, Milton’s mother saw her daughter graduate with a master’s degree in nursing and celebrated her acceptance into the doctorate program. But then, the eight years of chemo finally took their toll, and her health worsened. “We made the most of the two-and-a-half months that she had left with us,” Milton shares. They celebrated her mother’s last birthday at age 66. “We took our time and loved each other, and time somehow, even then, stood still.”
The Three Stories Inn is born
During their hotel stays, Milton often thought how helpful it would be if there were places that provided overnight accommodations to patients. Using her graduate school training, she put together a business proposal for such a place and, to her surprise, won some funding. But then the pandemic happened, which changed patient care, and she had to switch gears.
“I pivoted the business plan from not patients [but] to important life events like family reunions, anniversaries [and] weddings,” she says. She now knew better than anyone how fleeting these precious moments could be. She knew how important it was to make time stand still—and savor those moments.
Three Stories Inn grew out of that pivot, with the goal of giving guests a way to stop time long enough to enjoy spending it with those they love. “I went from the hospital to hospitality,” Milton quips, adding that the two concepts are close because both focus on people and connections. “Although this was different from the original business plan with patients, it did not mean it was less meaningful.”
Milton was thoughtful in picking the right property for her inn. She chose a historic building that was once home to Thomas Jefferson’s great-granddaughter, Maria Jefferson Eppes Shine. She remodeled it with utmost attention to the details, making sure the fantasy wallpaper matched the artfully carved furniture and plush throws. Even the wine coasters quote famous authors, putting one in a pensive mood. “There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all this sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well,” reads one by Nicholas Sparks, author of A Walk to Remember.
A literary passion project realized
Milton filled the apartments with beauty and books to encourage the guests to create their own narratives in an almost magical setting. Whether novels or photo albums, books tell stories, inspiring guests to create their own. Charmed by the concept, a local chef partnered with her, creating a fine French restaurant on the ground floor, fittingly named La Nouvelle, a French word that describes a short work of fiction known in English as a novella.
“The idea of a storybook place was created to pull travelers away from the hustle and bustle of life, leave their cares behind and create intentional and meaningful stories of their own,” Milton says. Soon, she welcomed guests celebrating all sorts of unique moments, from wedding anniversaries to divorce to toasting to sobriety.
“Traveling with my mom, I learned that the time we spend exploring the world with our loved ones is priceless, and the memories we make are irreplaceable,” Milton says. “I want my guests, many of whom are mother-daughters or BFFs or couples, to make memories they will never forget. Our lives are simply too short to not do so. If there’s one thing my mother taught me, it’s that.”
Photo by Lina Zeldovich
