Saturday, November 15, 2025

Q&A with Mirta Ojito

From my Q&A with Mirta Ojito, author of Deeper than the Ocean:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I don’t exactly know when I decided on Deeper than the Ocean as the title, but I do know that I never considered any other. The narrative in my historical novel is anchored on a very real event: the 1919 shipwreck of a Spanish ship, the Valbanera, with 488 people on board; most of them, immigrants who left Spain and were en route to Havana, Cuba, in search of a better life. A devastating hurricane derailed those dreams, and the ship sank far from Havana, off the coast of Key West. When it was found, the ship was buried in a bank of soft sand, and the bodies had disappeared. It is believed they were buried deep, deeper than the ocean. But the title also alludes to the love story that drives the story and to the ties that run deep and connect families across the oceans, migrations, generations, and...[read on]
Visit Mirta Ojito's website.

My Book, The Movie: Deeper than the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: Deeper than the Ocean.

Q&A with Mirta Ojito.

--Marshal Zeringue