The Veins of the Ocean

June 6, 2016
After Carlito Castillo, on Florida's death row for tossing his girlfriend's infant daughter off a bridge, commits suicide, his sister, Reina, a manicurist, abandons her weekly prison vigil and moves from Miami to the Florida Keys. She wants to disappear, to process her loss and dissect her brother's actions, yet she quickly befriends Nesto, a Cuban exile. She learns of Nesto's own jail-like life in Cuba, and about the family he left behind and continues to support. Before long, the two become inseparable, romance blossoms, and Nesto begins teaching Reina about Yemayá, orisha of the oceans, whom he claims Reina must appease in order to right her sibling's past. Now working in guest relations at a tourist dolphinarium, Reina uses Nesto's teachings to observe the park's confined dolphins, captives stolen from their natural habitat for the amusement of humans, and she begins a journey of self-discovery and reflection, developing a plan that will bring one of Yemayá's children back to the open sea. Engel (Vida) has written a thought-provoking novel about different types of prisons, including Carlito's physical imprisonment and Reina's mental and internal incarceration. The author writes with vivid language, building a world of equal parts misery and hope.

March 15, 2016
After her older brother Carlito kills his girlfriend Isabela's baby girl because he thinks Isabela is cheating on him, 23-year-old Reina feels trapped trying to comfort him on death row--until his death frees her to start over in Crescent Key, a place where nobody knows her family history. At first, Carlito claimed he didn't throw Isabela's baby into the river on purpose; it was, he said, an accident. Never mind that it's the same thing Carlito's father, Hector, did to 3-year-old Carlito when he thought his own wife had cheated on him. Back then, Carlito survived due to the lifesaving efforts of nearby fishermen. But now, alone in solitary confinement, Carlito "doesn't try to act remorseful or even say he's innocent anymore," says Reina. Somehow Engel (It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, 2013, etc.) is able to find a lightness in a disturbing story to carry the reader through the novel. But this effervescent, breezy voice does jar, at times, with the dark subject matter. Still, Engel has crafted a detailed, rich world of vivid atmosphere and imagery: "the hum of the ceiling fan blades hit me like a torrent of screams," Reina thinks, after her brother is found dead, a suicide hanging from the electrical cord of his fan. Finally free of her weekly visits to the prison, Reina moves to Crescent Key and finds companionship with Cuban immigrant Nesto Cadena and with the local dolphins--until she realizes that the only way she will truly be free is to reckon not just with Carlito's death, but with the rest of her family's ghosts as well. Here is the casual violence of men--and the tired acceptance of it that women face. But through it all rises Reina's voice--her belief in optimism, in family, in the importance of life. A dark comedy with unexpected heart.

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Starred review from April 1, 2016
The ocean exerts a dark influence on Reina Castillo's family. After all, it was into the murky waters of the Atlantic that her brother, Carlito, tossed his infant child, a crime that lands him on death row in Florida. Since their mother has cut off all ties with Carlito, Reina feels a crushing burden of guilt and compassion and religiously visits her brother every weekend. When Carlito eventually dies, Reina, a Cartegena native, sets off to reinvent her life on an island at the very edge of the Florida Keys. There, she meets a Cuban immigrant, Nesto Cadena, who views the ocean as succor, a conduit that will reunite him with his estranged family. A couple of digressing plot points notwithstanding, Engel's (It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, 2013) bawdy novel, peppered with fantastical, mythical tales and vivid descriptions of the saturated tropics, is much like its central characters, a Nuevo mundo alchemy of distilled African Spaniard Indian Asian and Arab blood . . . in varying mixtures. In a novel that is vitally relevant today when the word refugee has such loaded connotations, Engel delivers a pulsating, occasionally rambling, and deeply introspective take on how family, love, and guilt can both chain us together and set us free.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)