The Cuban

The Cuban is a true story about survival, love, and loss against the backdrop of the professional boxing world. It explores the layers of individualism that define any relationship, from when we first meet Ashley, an unlikable spoiled Florida surgeon's daughter, and Mariano, a Cuban athlete, on the Florida Straits.

Mariano and Ashley connect in Texas while Ashley is in graduate school and Mariano is fighting/boxing to stay alive. They are from radically different worlds; they do not speak the same language. Immediately, we see the imbalance of power - when one person needs another to survive and the other one wants someone for possession and excitement.

We tend to think of men as abusing relationships for sex and power, but what about when a woman does it? The roles are reversed and a man uses his looks, body, and sexual prowess for advancement and survival and the woman exploits it.

Set in the professional boxing world in the 1990s and early 2000s, The Cuban follows Ashley and Mariano from Texas to Monterrey, Mexico and Las Vegas, NV. Ashley's cunning, sinister ability to secure money for Mariano's career is offset and camouflaged by the shear brutality of the world they are in.

The affair and lifestyle are tumultuous and thrilling until it ends horribly - Mariano is knocked out in a televised boxing event. Brain damaged, Mariano is doomed to life on the streets and the throngs of paranoid schizophrenia. Ashley is unceremoniously forgotten.

For over a decade, Ashley and Mariano's lives remain sadly entangled until the final night they shared together.
The Cuban guides readers through a tragic, volatile, and at times very loving, but doomed affair. Readers are torn between a man whom we are told to fear and loathe but cannot help but feel an attraction towards and a woman whom we are told is desirable by race, class, and education but is manipulative, cruel, and self-centered.

Written for anyone who enjoys human-interest stories and sports history, true stories about chasing the American dream, and tragic romance, The Cuban is meant to cause self and cultural reflection. The story is deeply personal, nostalgic, and meant to stir emotion about tough topics like forbidden love, immigration, mental illness, and the brutality of combat sports.