By the light of a roaring fire, Golfing in Cuba sifts through the misunderstandings and acts of simple malice that punctuate life in a sluggish backwater town. To search for joy in such a place would seem a fool's errand. Then again, even the shriveled Rio Puerco sometimes runs high and wild after a bad storm. And when a former Baptist Deacon breaks a decade of silence with a phone call, his message strikes sparks off the walls of his son's adobe refuge. Thus begins a darkly comic tempest of colliding generations, fractured loyalties, and flammable resentment. For a man named Pastor caught between a boy who asks questions that have no answers and a father who never offered much advice worth remembering what's at stake is nothing more dramatic or less crucial than the will to get up in the morning. Of course, he could blow off work for today and go fishing. Or lie in bed with the intractable font of his undoing. In a perfect world that is. Acknowledgements: To Cynthia Wong and Heidi Basarab for their patient readings of tedious early drafts, my heartfelt thanks.