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by Mark Peres (Author)
What if the story you needed most was buried in your father's past?
Ambrosio Benchimol Peres lived one life after another-from a Jewish childhood in the Amazon jungle to selling lingerie in pre-revolutionary Havana to starting multiple import-export companies in the United States-reinventing himself in improbable ways across cities and countries over the course of the twentieth century.
In 1992, his adult son, a young federal law clerk, invites him to talk-really talk-for the first time. Armed with a tape recorder and quiet urgency, the son begins asking questions he's never dared to ask before. Why did they move twenty times in twenty years? What drove his father's unrelenting restlessness? And what, if anything, can still be repaired? All while the son confronts a life decision of his own.
As the tapes roll, Ambrosio begins to reveal stories both astonishing and evasive: tales of diaspora and resilience, financial booms and busts, failed dreams, lost friends, travel and betrayal. But with each revelation comes another layer of doubt-was it all true, or simply the truth as Ambrosio wanted it remembered?
With memory as both bridge and battleground, father and son navigate a maze of ambition, identity, and unfinished love-until a secret emerges that reframes everything the son thought he knew.
