Eye of the Storm follows 70yr-old Lazaro as he revisits the 1963 hurricane that shattered his Hialeah childhood, uncovering buried family trauma, spiritual hauntings, and the painful path toward forgiveness. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration came from a story related to me by my best friend when I was 14. He told me that from the ages of 7 to 11, he had been sexually abused by his older brother. His family practiced Santeria. The story stuck with me and in 1990 I wrote a one-act play entitled “Eye of the Storm” about a child who is abused for the New York Shakespeare Festival (New York Public Theater). The play became the basis for the novel although I expanded the story considerably in the book by using the second part of the novel to explore how sexual abuse affects relationships and adult decisions.

How did you approach writing memory as something almost supernatural?

My Cuban heritage and the prevalence of Santeria and my fascination with magic realism (as depicted in the novels of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez) helped shape my approach. Growing up in the Cuban community, there was always a sense that the spiritual world and the everyday world coexisted side by side. I wanted “Eye of the Storm” to reflect the idea that the past is never entirely dead and that memory itself can haunt, guide, protect, or even fool us. The hurricane in the novel became a metaphor for that reality. For my principal character Lazaro Lopez, memory becomes another character—persisitent and impossible to escape.

How did your Cuban background and understanding of the culture affect and shape the world of Hialeah in the novel?

My Cuban-American background gave “Eye of the Storm” its very heartbeat. The world of Hialeah feels lived in because I carry its memories, humor and contradictions within me. I lived it. I tried to portray the Cuban-Americans of Hialeah as deeply human–flawed, loving, wounded, but always resilient–like the people I grew up around in my neighborhood.

How did you decide how much of the spiritual world to put on the page?

I was very careful not to allow the mystical world–the Santeria, dreams, omens, La Guajira and unseeen forces to overwhelm the story. I wanted these elements to reflect the reality of many Cuban and Cuban families, where spirituality and everyday existence live side by side. There is nothing strange about the sacrifices and rituals that are performed. They’re part of life—not an abberation.

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