Happyish

Happyish by Jeanette Escudero (2022) 245 pages

Alex Martinez was ready to mark the completion of a year since her unexpected, unwanted divorce when her neurologist told her that her headaches were caused by a brain tumor. Probably not cancerous, but still a big deal, because it needed to be removed soon, and it would require her to have a support system, in addition to lots of therapy and healing time.

This health news converged with her poorly received presentation to her longtime bosses at an auto parts company, which was vying to have its products sold in PriceMart stores. Her bosses told her to take some time off, and her reaction ‒ not knowing if that might have meant she was fired ‒ was to decide to travel to places that her younger sister wanted to see, before she died of leukemia many years before. And not to tell her two mothers about the tumor. Alex starts out at the Grand Canyon, then goes to Costa Rica, then to Puerto Rico.

The book covers Alex's journey, both in space and time and relationships. There's something about her that made it hard for me to relate to her exactly, but watching her live through it all felt authentic.

Back to Blood

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe  704 pp.

Miami is a melting pot of immigrants. A large part of the population is Cuban and the Cuban community is the main focus of this novel. Police Officer Nestor Camacho has become a pariah to his family and his Cuban neighborhood. Nestor is called a traitor for, in attempting to save the life of a Cuban trying to enter the country and preventing him from setting foot on land. Then Nestor has to face his superiors for doing an "unapproved" interview with the press following the incident. To compound things further, Nestor's girlfriend Magdalena dumps him for her boss, a psychiatrist who treats pornography addiction. Add in Russian millionaires, Jewish New Yorker senior citizens. an art forger, and a Haitian French professor who insists he and his kids are French and not Haitian and you have a jumbled mix of characters. The storylines of the characters cross, merge, and mingle in a plethora of ways that may or may not be resolved by the end of the book. I listened to the audio version with excellent narration by Lou Diamond Phillips. But in spite of the excellent performance by Phillips, the book was just so-so and way too long.