Every family has a story that has been told so many times it has worn smooth. You cannot always trace it back to its source. You cannot always verify it. But it has shaped every decision your family ever made, and that is its own kind of proof.
In my family, those stories came from Cuba. They came from people who had left behind homes, property, and family members unable to make their escape from the island. Strangers who became family the moment we recognized each other’s sacrifice. And who found in that shared loss something as strong as blood, a pride in being Cuban that only deepened as they learned to become American. I grew up inside that community understanding, even as a child, that some truths do not submit to verification. They submit only to faith.
That understanding is the seed of Three Mangoes for Hemingway.
On the surface it is a road trip novel. Three men in a car, a grandfather and his two grandsons, one of them restless and drawn to stories, the other armored against believing any of them. A drive from New Jersey to Key West carrying three mango saplings in clay pots and a sixty-year-old promise. But underneath the road and the miles and the family arguments that fill them, it is about something I have been thinking about my whole life.
The faith it takes to honor family myths you cannot prove.
Two days from now it is available on Amazon. The link is in the first comment. If this story sounds like something you have been waiting to read, I would be grateful to have you along for the road south.
Three Mangoes for Hemingway arrives in two days. The road south is waiting.
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