Stephen Kimber’s research for The Sweetness in the Lime helps his holiday romance read like a Cuban-Canadian Casablanca

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Stephen Kimber was inspired to write The Sweetness in the Lime while lying on a beach in Cuba.

“I had decided that I wanted to write a novel that wasn’t based here, in Nova Scotia,” Kimber said.

All the author’s previous novels were set in his home province, so when the idea for Sweetness came to him, it was an itch he had to scratch, even if it would take him a few years to return to the book his publisher called a “holiday romance.”

Kimber’s novel is a love letter to Cuba, but it wasn’t the only book inspired by the country.

“I got waylaid by a very different story,” Kimber said. “The story of five Cuban spies who were jailed in the United States. I spent five years investigating that and publishing the book What Lies Across the Water.” Kimber has skated back and forth between fiction and non-fiction throughout his career.

Kimber has been a cohort director in the Master of Fine Arts for writing non-fiction at the University of King’s College since co-founding the program. He is preparing to make the leap to fiction in his teaching practice in the fall of 2023.

“I will be taking over the MFA in creative writing-fiction cohort this year,” Kimber said.

Kimber said that his journalism and fiction have always cross-pollinated.

“When I’m doing fiction, I steal from my non-fiction research, and when I’m doing non-fiction, I steal from my fiction practice.”

Kimber never intended to take a hiatus from The Sweetness in the Lime, but the story of the Cuban Five was too captivating to turn away. He was grateful for the research he did for What Lies Across the Water when he returned to his novel years later.

“You’re borrowing from the real world to inform your story,” Kimber said, adding that his novel was richer for the details he discovered when researching the first book.

Kimber’s dichotic career leaves an impression on his work. For The Sweetness in the Lime, his characters travel between two worlds in Cuba and Canada while resolving some of the tension in their own lives. The hero of the story, Eli Cooper, can’t escape the heartbreak of his youth, until he finds a connection with Mariela, outside of his country and culture.

“They find their way to a place that works from themselves,” Kimber said when describing the growth of his characters. “It may not be love, but it works for them.”

Kimber said he hopes his book inspires a more robust understanding of Cuba.

“I’d like people to see the world viewed a little less through the prism of the Cold War,” Kimber said. Eli learns from Mariela. Their connection serves as a conduit to better appreciate Cuban history.

For Kimber, who grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, direct, immersive research allowed him to appreciate the added dimensions of Cuban culture.

“There are stories in here that are taken from real life,” Kimber said.

Kimber’s research is honed by decades of discovering stories in the world around him, from the Maritimes to the Caribbean. Those literary pursuits make The Sweetness in the Lime the kind of fiction that illuminates reality.

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