He can push a broom, can't he?

Number 3 in a series of excerpts from The Skinny Years.

        “Be reasonable, mamá. Juan barely speaks English—and he’s a professor of Cuban law,” Alicia calmly explained. “Where could he find a job in this country?”

“He can push a broom, can’t he? You don’t need an American law degree to do that.”

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The Skinny Years is available in hardbound, paperback and eBook editions. 

SYNOPSIS:

Surfers, soul brothers, hippies, and thugs — they’re all part of Victor “Skinny” Delgado’s world growing up in Miami during the turbulent 1960s. Fleeing the Castro regime in Cuba, Skinny’s once-wealthy family moves from a mansion in Havana to a roach-infested bungalow in Miami’s low-rent Wynwood district. Over the next ten years the Delgados struggle to survive in this strange new land—a place where fat men in red suits enter your home through the chimney, demons appear at the door begging for candy, and young women go on dates without chaperones. There’s only one constant in Skinny's world as he grows from 8 to 18. He longs in vain for the girl of his dreams: his neighbor Janice Bockman who seems everything American—and everything he’s not.