A haunting evocation of a homeland lost and the fruits of exile . . .
Professor, emigre, cook, and now widower, Maximo passes his days in Miami's Domino Park refining his elaborate jokes - like the one about a mongrel who comes to the States looking for love and luck. His sleepless nights he spends struggling to recall the precise shade of his beloved wife Rosa's eyes, and reliving the hardships he and she faced together on their arrival in America.
Charismatic, irascible and romantic, Maximo may lure patrons to his restaurant with his traditional Cuban fare, but it is the stories that keep them. Jealous husbands and wives, disappointed children and old dreamers, all have their own tales to tell of the island with its fragrant streets, passionate music and fields of cane that compels their imaginations. None can resist the notion that the past was better than the present, and all are in thrall to the need to express that particular grain of experience which, they believe, makes these ordinary lives extraordinary.
