¡Hola!

Such a long time since I last updated this blog. Bueno, I was taking a break after completing the fifth Havana Mystery novel, Last Seen in Havana (a sequel to Death under the Perseids) and I am happy to report that it is available for preorder! They are all published by Soho Crime as part of the Havana Mystery series.

Last Seen in Havana is actually a two-fold novel —chapters alternate between the late eighties and 2018. The eighties are seen through the eyes of a young American, Sarah, who visits Havana in 1985 and decides to stay. She marries a handsome Cuban lieutenant and they have a daughter —our friend Mercedes! Sarah takes a new identity, Tania Rojas, and does her best to Cubanize herself, but isn’t always successful. The letters she writes to her friend Rob, a Berkeley student, depict her initial fascination with the island, her efforts to understand it, and her growing disenchantment with the place she once wished to call home.

In 2018, Mercedes is happily settled as a cook and co-owner of La Baquería Cubana in Miami. She has never known her mother’s real name, just her Cuban identity. But “Tania Rojas” vanished when her daughter was two years old. Mercedes’ father, Joaquín, died in Angola a year after his wife’s disappearance. Only Mercedes’ paternal grandmother, Mamina, may have some answers to what happened to Tania, but she has always been tight-lipped. Now, she seems to be losing her mind so Mercedes has no choice but to question her grandmother before it is too late. So she goes back to Cuba and starts searching…

In this novel I also explore the theme of belonging. Having lived out of my native country for twenty-seven years, this topic is close to my heart. Mercedes struggles to find not only her mother, but a place to call home. Like her mother before, she wonders where she belongs. What, exactly, is home? And where is it?