The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony

Restaurant critic Tometich’s witty, open-hearted debut recounts growing up in a mixed Filipino-American household in the Sunshine State. She begins in a Florida courtroom circa 2015: “Rows of orange people sit handcuffed,” she writes, “[and] one of them is my mother.” Josefina, who immigrated from the Philippines to work as a nurse, has been arrested for shooting at a man she claims was stealing from her mango tree; none of her three adult children are surprised. Though all the ingredients are in place for the “most Florida of Oh, Florida stories,” Tometich instead shifts gears to unfurl a complex coming-of-age chronicle set in a household buffeted by marital strife. At the center is Josefina, who married the white ne’er-do-well son of well-off Northeasterners. Tometich describes her parents’ harrowing fights and the moments of refuge she found with her paternal grandmother. Amid it all, Tometich yearned for her family to be “normal,” before eventually learning to embrace the abnormalities that “make us less vanilla and... more tangy green mango dipped in bagoong.” Tometich writes with awe and humor about her irascible mother, who provided her children with a middle-class upbringing, while never underplaying the emotional toll extracted along the way. It’s a moving account of coming to terms with the forces—good and bad—that shape a person. Agent: Kayla Lightner, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Apr.)