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Carolina
García-Aguilera
Cuban-born Carolina García-Aguilera was a private investigator for more than a decade before becoming a full-time writer. Her previous books include Bloody Waters, Bloody Shame, Bloody Secrets, A Miracle in Paradise, Havana Heat and Bitter Sugar—all widely acclaimed mysteries in the Lupe Solano series. She has been honored with the Flamingo Award and the Shamus Award for her books.
Her latest outing, One Hot Summer, confirms that, during the span of a summer, anything can happen. Former lovers return, husbands lose all rationale, and family can suffocate a person more easily than the sweltering humidity of a late Florida afternoon.
Set
in Miami Beach, One Hot Summer follows the life of Margarita Maria
Santos Silva, a woman bent on making her own decisions in a family that
seems to have the future, as well as the rules, neatly laid out for her.
After the birth of her son, Margarita is at the end of taking a year off
from the stressful legal career she worked so hard to earn. Margarita
suddenly faces the daunting task of deciding whether she should go back
to work or stay home and dutifully raise her two-year-old son—the
latter being the choice both her overachieving husband, Ariel, and old-fashioned
family desperately want her to make.
But when her old law school boyfriend the ultrasuave and handsome Luther Simmonds, shows up out of nowhere, all hell breaks loose. Along with her newly awakened passion, Margarita again understands the empowering warmth of having Luther listen to her needs and desires. She now has twice as many critical decisions to make and only one hot summer in which to make them.
In
a laugh-out-loud scenes that make Garcia-Aguilera a master of the comedic
narrative, we watch Margartia as she transforms her loss of identity into
the shape of her new, powerful self. Watching Margarita deal with her
challenges is achingly funny. What's even more savory, and ultimately
life-affirming, is how Margarita manages to navigate through career, family,
and cultural conflicts while understanding that she can indeed live life
on her own terms, and that compromise is the golden road that most people
quite often ignore.
Author
tour
Excerpt,
One Hot Summer
