Category: Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN-10: 1941026141
Type: Fiction
Pages: 300
Copyright: May 12, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781941026144
Taking its name from the sauce that is the foundation for Cuban cooking, Sofrito is a bittersweet novel about Frank Delgado, an American-born Cuban who journeys to Havana in search of a fabled recipe that promises to save his family's failing restaurant in New York City.
Taking its name from the sauce that is the foundation for Cuban cooking, Sofrito is a bittersweet novel about Frank Delgado, an American-born Cuban who journeys to Havana in search of a fabled recipe that promises to save his family's failing restaurant in New York City. In Havana, he is joined by a group of eccentric characters as he navigates the city's underbelly in search of the recipe.
While Frank is at first charmed by the character and beauty of Havana, he slowly discovers the ugly contradictions of the country his parents fled decades earlier. He falls in love, is nabbed by the secret police, and learns the truth about his father's past and his involvement in Castro's Revolution.
Layered with culinary imagery, Sofrito takes the reader on a tour of Havana while examining what it means to be an exile and how international politics, the cold war, economic isolation and decades of dictatorship have played a role in the lives of multiple individuals, each with their on opinions and ideals.
Excerpt
A poster of Che Guevara from the famous Korda photograph looked over the room.
“I’m not much of a communist,” she said, “but you can’t deny he’s handsome. Maybe one day I can get a poster of Brad Pitt or Enrique Iglesias.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But I saw you looking. You’re an exile, Frank. I know how you think.”
“I am not an exile.” He had never longed for Cuba. To him, Cuba was a word spoken in occasional newscasts. It was violence. And it was that eerie quiet that surrounded his childhood home.
Marisol opened a pair of large wooden shutters. Frank stepped onto the balcony and looked out on the ocean across the avenue. The sun was low on his left, far in the distance, past the ocean, behind Miramar. To his right he could see the Morro Castle turning pink. A soft breeze carrying the scent of the Cuban childhood he did not have came and went in subtle waves that left him wondering if it was real, if he had truly smelled it. He rested his hands on the wrought iron rail that had been rusted and shaped by a hundred years of salt and wind. The texture of the wall, the exposed cement and stone of the building, bare under a wash of blue like the part of the sky that was closest to the sun, framed the view that had become a simple memory for thousands of brokenhearted exiles. His stomach twisted and his throat itched with a heavy melancholy he didn’t understand.
“Quiza,” he whispered without turning from the view that had captured his defenseless nostalgia. “In a way, maybe I am an exile.”
Marisol stepped behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She rested the side of her face against the back of his shoulder. “Maybe,” she said softly, “we’re all exiles in our own way.”
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