Short Synopsis
In The Veins of the Ocean, Patricia Engel delivers a profound and riveting Pan-American story of fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the beauty and power of the natural world, and in one another.

Full Synopsis
Reina Castillo is the alluring young woman whose beloved brother is serving a death sentence for a crime that shocked the community, throwing a baby off a bridge—a crime for which Reina secretly blames herself. With her brother's death, though devastated and in mourning, Reina is finally released from her prison vigil. Seeking anonymity, she moves to a sleepy town in the Florida Keys where she meets Nesto Cadena, a recently exiled Cuban awaiting with hope the arrival of the children he left behind in Havana. Through Nesto's love of the sea and capacity for faith, Reina comes to understand her own connections to the life-giving and destructive forces of the ocean that surrounds her as well as its role in her family's troubled history, and in their companionship, begins to find freedom from the burden of guilt she carries for her brother's crime.

Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, Havana, Cuba, and Cartagena, Colombia, with The Veins of the Ocean Patricia Engel delivers a profound and riveting Pan-American story of fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the beauty and power of the natural world, and in one another.

"Engel writes with a raw realism that elevates her characters’ mundane existence — their failures and failings, hopes and dreams, pleasures and pains — to something majestic." ---New York Times

"Author Engel reads her own work with a reserved narrative style consistent
with main character Reina’s quiet and introspective personality. . . . She gives Nesto’s
conversations sincerity and compassion as he tells stories about nature and the sea." ---Booklist Audio Review

"A dark comedy with unexpected heart." ---Kirkus

Dayton Prize Finalist