SEASONING

Some families don't just move to a new country. They bring the whole recipe with them. Catarina is ten when she learns that laughing too loud can be mistaken for a flaw. Decades later, half a world away, it's her younger brother Rafael's turn to prove - without a speech, without a fight, just by showing up every single day - that the warmth their family carries isn't a weakness. It's the answer nobody around him knew they needed. From a horse-riding school across the street from their grandfather's motorcycle shop in São Paulo, to a cattle ranch in the Brazilian interior, to a fountain in Barcelona that promises everyone who drinks from it will return, to the snow-capped mountains of Colorado - Seasoning follows two generations of one multicultural family discovering, each in their own time, a truth their new American neighbors never expected to learn: that you can mix different cultures without losing a single one of them, as long as someone has the courage to add joy where there was only discipline, and lightness where there was only fear.

Pages: 105, Paperback, Independently published