The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora: 06/25/18

The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora by Pablo Cartaya is set in Miami, Florida in a Cuban neighborhood. Arturo is spending the summer washing dishes in his Abuela's restaurant. Meanwhile there's a developer threatening to forever change the landscape of the neighborhood and if he gets his way, the Zamora family restaurant won't get to expand and worse, it might even be closed!

I happened to read Arturo Zamora on the heels of a similar situation in our own neighborhood. Here, it was a bookstore, but the story was otherwise the same: an outside developer was threatening to close a fifty-year-old institution so that they could redevelop an old building into work-live-lofts. There's no actual evidence that our city has the need for that sort of development but there was no arguing with faceless developers.

Arturo's family has the advantage of the developer being a single man and one with enough of an ego that he has to be there in the thick of things. That means the developer's ego can be his own downfall, given enough room and time. Also, since Arturo's family owns their own building, they are on a stronger footing than our bookstore was.

The Zamoras get a happy ending. They get a bigger restaurant. The neighborhood keeps its character and gets improved in a way that everyone wants. (In our case, the bookstore ended up having to change ownership and move across the street.)

Five stars

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