The Life and Death of a Proud Azorean: A Biography is a bilingual semi-biographical tome about a proud Azorean civil servant by the name of António Augusto Machado. He died under somewhat suspicious circumstances in New York in 1961 at the age of forty-three while on a private business trip to the US. The book is about 264 pages long and it is divided into three parts which, in turn, are subdivided into chapters each one with its own title. The three parts are followed by an epilogue. It also includes an insert with authentic photographs with their respective captions and an appendix containing a variety of original documents having to do with António's life and times.
António was a very competent, loyal and well-liked civil servant for the Autonomous Regional Government of the Azores from 1943 until the time of his death in 1961. His passing took place at the Paramount Hotel, in New York. Unknown to his wife, Elzira, back in Ponta Delgada, was the fact that he happened to be in the Big Apple in the company of a married female friend from Boston, Laura, who was with him to serve as an interpreter, supposedly. She was only thirty-five years old and was married to a much older man of Azorean descent, Aníbal, who had returned to São Miguel in the late 1940s searching for love. He carried a trump card with him: American citizenship. At the time, Laura, in her early twenties, was desperate to leave São Miguel. It was an opportunity that could not be overlooked and she took it.
When António's death occurred, his widow (and the rest of her family and friends back in Ponta Delgada) were convinced that he had been poisoned to death. After all, he was relatively young and, at the time of his departure from São Miguel, in perfectly good health. Her conviction took root when she found out, a few months later after his death, that her husband was having a long-distance affair with Laura because of a stash of love letters that were discovered in his desk at the Governo Civil and further corroborated by his lying repeatedly about who had accompanied him to New York in his last letter addressed to her, and by other information that surfaced after his demise. Although there was no concrete evidence to substantiate the family's gut feeling that someone had poisoned him to death, their conviction remained strong and, curiously, it was espoused by both males and females; the former pointed the accusatory finger at Laura's husband while the latter were convinced that she was the culprit. None had the necessary evidence to prove without reasonable doubt their case.
The Life and Death of a Proud Azorean: A Biography contains factual socio-economic and cultural information about life in the Azores and the general conditions that led to widespread emigration to America, Canada, Brazil, France and elsewhere in the XX century. It will put the Azores and several generations of Azoreans on the world map, so to speak.
That said, the book is also a work of fiction in that it contains a chapter where I imagine a dialogue between the main protagonists based on my knowledge of their personalities. Luckily for me, a lot of material information (multiple personal and business letters, telegrams, postcards, photographs, an autopsy report, an 8 mm film, etc.) were carefully kept for many years by my mother and it served as the inspiration for the fictional conversations that may, or may not, have taken place between the people involved.
In my opinion, aside from its universal appeal on account of the human story being told, the book will also be of interest to members of the Portuguese diaspora around the world, especially those with an Azorean background.
