Johnny Diaz

From the acclaimed author of Miami Manhunt and Boston Boys Club comes a witty, new, warmhearted novel of friendship, familia, and finding a place to call home—even in a city where it’s almost impossible to get an authentic Cuban sandwich…

Carlos Martin is twenty-seven years old and ready for a change. Cuban-born and Miami-raised, the cute but slightly awkward high school teacher figures that Boston is about as far from the crazy South Beach social scene as he could get—and a way to escape the bittersweet reminders of his recently departed mother. Life in "Beantown" is quite a culture shock—until Carlos meets Tommy Perez, another Miami transplant who quickly shows him the ropes. Now, in the course of one wildly unpredictable year, Carlos is going to learn to embrace his newfound independence, as well as his individuality…

Beantown Cubans is a direct sequel to Boston Boys Club but with a new narrator, Carlos Martin, a Cuban school teacher who moves to Boston from Miami after his mother dies of cancer. It’s Carlos’s first year in Boston and he’s doing his best to move on but his mother continues to appear in his dreams and gives him some long-distance guidance. Carlos has some unfinished business in Miami with his distant father and older sister. 

ALTERNATE TITLES

Beantown Cubans wasn’t the immediate title. At first, I wanted to call the book, To Boston, with love, from Cuba. I thought that title played with Carlos Martin’s journey from his native Cuba to Boston. But the title was a bit wordy and didn’t reflect Carlos’s friend, Tommy. So I came up with Beantown Cubans, which was taken from my blog, beantowncuban.com.

For Beantown Cubans, I knew I wanted to continue the Tommy Perez-Mikey love story line from the first novel. I wanted to explore what it would be like to date someone in recovery from alcoholism. But I also wanted to introduce a new character, Carlos, as he mourns his mother, who was his best friend in Miami. I was inspired by the former NBC TV show “Providence” which features the main character interacting with her departed mother in dream sequences at the beginning of each episode. I loved those sweet whimsical light-hearted scenes which helped soften the blow of a lost loved one. Those dream sequences also foreshadowed what was the come in the storyline so I incorporated that technique with Carlos’s chapters. Whenever his mom appears in his dreams, she is hinting of something to come. Although my parents are fortunately still alive, I have many close friends who have told me that their deceased parent visits them now and them in their dreams. I thought that was special and I wanted to experiment with that theme in Beantown Cubans to make the novel a more thoughtful and deeper read.