The Cigar Maker
Product Description
The Cigar City. The year is 1898. Young Cuban rebel Salvador Ortiz and his family have escaped the hardship of war-torn Cuba, but the union halls, cigar factories, and dark alleys of Tampa are filled with violence and vendetta. Salvador must defy constant labor strife and deadly corruption in a one-industry town known for backroom cockfights, street thugs, late-night abductions and mass production of the world’s best hand-rolled stogies. An ideological battle for co… More >>
One of the joys of reading historical novels is that the reader is afforded the opportunity to open a window into another dimension, to venture into places, people and events – and as nearly as possible and given a writer of sufficient skill and imagination – to explore and experience them at first hand. There is even a bonus, when the author like Mark McGinty takes up the story of his ancestors, weaving together the many threads of the vibrant and lively community they lived in: the Cuban community of Ybor City – now part of Tampa, Florida – at the turn of the last century. In basing a story on actual recorded historical incidents and real people, the reader is blessed with a narrative more incredible and fantastic than anything a writer could create of whole cloth – such as the incident that opens the story. Did it really happen, the loosing bird in a cockfight in Ybor City, eleven decades ago, having it’s head bitten off by it’s humiliated owner? The writer’s grandfather insisted that it did – and thereby opens the tale, of Salvador Ortiz, one-time rebel and bandit, and his fiercely proud and independent wife Olympia. Salvador is now a cigar maker, a man with a particular and valuable skill – but Cuba is torn by war and ravaged by epidemics. For the sake of their children, they move to Florida; not quite an out of the pot and into the cook=fire move, but not without perils and dangers. At first Ybor City is a safe refuge for the Ortiz family – an escape from violence and famine and disease. Alas, they have exchanged one set of challenges and risks for another set, only slightly less challenging. In the next few years, Ybor City and the cigar-making industry will be racked by strikes and violent confrontations between the cigar workers, the factory owners and the Anglo establishment. Salvador Ortiz – a modest man of flinty integrity, soft-spoken and yet capable of decisive action when the necessity calls for it- will almost by accident become a leader among his coworkers. He struck me as a reader, as being the most fully-developed character, the moral center of a world filled with either well-intentioned characters without the courage to act on their good intentions, or amoral barbarians all too eager to act on their bad ones. Salvador is an immensely appealing character, not least to his wife, Olympia; the daughter of an aristocrat who nonetheless say something worthy in a man several degrees lower than she on the social scale.
The working-class Cuban émigré world of Ybor City, in the first years of the 20th century is lovingly detailed; the vigorous personalities, customs and conversation, the foods and festivals, the work-day world of the cigar factories, and the recreations – cockfights and bolita games being only a small part of the entertainments brought by the Cuban cigar workers. I had never realized that there was a substantial Cuban community in Florida that early on; I had assumed that Castro’s Revolution was largely responsible for the current Cuban Diaspora. For a window into an unexpected and fascinating world – the Cigar Maker is recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5
If you like the stuff of James Michener — that’s one great reason to check out McGinty’s novel. This is a sweeping story of family and generations with adroit and impressive focus on turn-of-the century immigrants in Florida. Moreover, this cigar history and experiences of those who know the craft is also excellent in this novel. The author does an impressive job weaving the drama & history together into a truly captivating tale.
Rating: 5 / 5