Local doctor releases touching memoir
BY LEN CABRERA
Ricardo José González-Rothi, a former University of Florida and Veterans Administration doctor, is releasing The Mango Chronicle (Running Wild Press) next month.
The book is not simply a memoir but a compilation of stories written with purpose by a man whose passion for writing matches his passion for medicine. Gainesville resident and internationally acclaimed author Shelley Fraser Mickle reviewed the book and said González-Rothi uses “carefully carved sentences” that “linger in a reader’s mind.” The stories allow readers to experience the joy, wonder, confusion, and other emotions of the author’s younger self.
The title comes from González-Rothi’s memories of the branches of the mango tree that framed his self-proclaimed “Cuban-Huck Finn” childhood.
A coming-of-age story with a twist
The Mango Chronicle is a coming-of-age story with a twist: refugee resettlement and culture shock. The reader will experience pre-Castro Cuba from the eyes of a child entangled in the midst of a revolution and nuclear crisis, then exiled and eventually struggling to assimilate to American culture.
González-Rothi was born in 1950 and moved to New Jersey in 1963. He went from barely able to speak English, living in a cramped, one-bathroom house with 16 people, to Cornell University, followed by medical school at New York University. He did his residency at the University of Florida, where he served on the Internal Medicine faculty from 1982 to 2010. He returned to Gainesville after retiring as Emeritus Professor at the FSU medical school in 2016 and started his “second chapter” as a writer.
The Mango Chronicle started as a passion project so González-Rothi’s wife and daughters would know his life, especially his early life in Cuba. The book took ten years to write and evolved into a story of hope that has been hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “A captivating memoir and a startlingly edifying portrait of Cuba. Verdict: get it!”
The Mango Chronicle will be released on May 7, 2024, and can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Independent Publishers Group, or at your local bookstore.
You can read González-Rothi’s other works at his website, gonzalezrothiauthor.com.
Thank you. It’s good reminder of how fortunate we are in America, with supportive families and cultures we partake in. Our recent older generations saw bewildering changes in history.
He was not only a great and caring doctor, he is a great person who I’m blessed to have known for decades. America got the best Cuba had to offer when the Communists took over. Dr. Gonzales-Rothi is but one example. AND many of them ended us in Gainesville, Bengochea, Ariet, et al.