The Vendor of Inevitable Things

Nora Vane does not believe in destiny. As a corporate anthropologist, she deals in sample sizes, confirmation bias, and the human tendency to narrate backwards-turning random occurrences into what people call "fate." But Nora's perfectly structured world begins to shift when she accepts a consulting project in Los Angeles for Hamasaki Confections, a historic, traditional Kyoto-based ice cream company preparing for a high-stakes global expansion. Her mission is to decode "authenticity" for a corporate market, but on the foggy mornings of Marina del Rey, she encounters something that defy all her data. By the water sits a small ice cream cart with a pale blue awning, tended by Toshio Hamasaki-the retired brother of the company's founder. Toshio doesn't just sell artisanal black sesame and persimmon ice cream; he offers a confounding philosophy. He believes in the "current"-an invisible quality that travels through generations, steering our lives long before we think we've made a choice. Confronted by questions her scientific papers can't answer, Nora is pulled into a transformative journey. From the sun-bleached coast of California to the corporate boardrooms of New York, from the biting winter of Edinburgh to the melancholy, granite streets of Porto, Portugal-where a chef uses silence like salt to cook memories-Nora can no longer remain a detached observer. To find her own truth, she must finally confront her grandmother's legacy, face the weight of the past, and discover that true freedom isn't about fighting the current, but learning how to navigate it.

Pages: 202, Paperback, Independently published