Novella Weekly Background

 Roberto Sandoval is an accountant. When he finished high school he studied business at the university in Arboleña. Once he discovered accounting he took all the course he could get. Then he went to work for the government. He worked well there and was sent to other countries including Spain for experience in accounting systems. 

    After 10 years of successful work, he decided he wanted to be where the real action was. American corporations were setting up shop in Arboleña. He wanted to learn English and know-how from those who were successful. He saw that American firms had the resources to come to another country to enlarge their businesses. So he wanted to go to work for one and learn as much as he could.

   Because his brother Luis had returned home and was involved in starting a family business empire, he knew he needed to learn more accounting.  Not only had his brother started an international soccer camp through the ISAI Soccer Camp Turnkey program, he was talking about the development of a Sports Adventure Tourism complex on their wild lands across the Rio Branco. He needed to learn computer based accounting. Luis was planning for the family to become the richest, most powerful in Arboleña.  Roberto was going to play his part in that development.

   So he went to work at an American company. Soon after, Alicia Calderon returned to Arboleña after years of successful work with the Organization of American State as an information expert. She was an expert on computers and soon was talking with her old friend Renaldo Nunez about the need to computerize Arboleña. He agreed and worked with her to get the Arboleña Computer Center going.

   Meanwhile, Alicia began putting on courses on computerized accounting at the university. The American company sent Roberto there to learn what he could. There he met Alicia.

   He was extremely reserved, not his usual outgoing self. He was in the presence of a Calderon, an upper class aristocrat. He knew instinctively that a mixed blood Latino like himself could never even dare aspire to her. Yet the first time he laid eyes on her, he felt something deep inside. But he hid it under a mask of indifference. He had seen others who had been broken because of their love for a high caste girl. Not him. He had a future and his family to think about. At his level of society, being a Sandoval was something. It would be enough.

   Alicia looked at the handsome Latino who entered the room and looked at her with cold disdain. She knew many of mixed Latino Blood often resented her pure Spanish heritage. But when she looked into his eyes, she felt a shock of recognition. She knew him! But she had never laid eyes on him before. Who was he?

   As the class proceeded, Roberto was careful never to be in the presence of Profesora Calderon alone. He came just before class started. He left before the last student left. So there would be no problem, he did his work with double his usual care and detail. He knew he was an excellent student, the equal of anyone in Arboleña or any of the other countries he had visited.

    Although she had experienced a great deal of freedom in her work in the OAS, she understood exactly what Roberto was doing. He did not want to cross the line. If it were one of her university students in their twenties it would have been correct. They should not cross the line. 

    But this was a man, an experienced man. She had already through her contact network found out he had had successful assignments for the government in Spain, Mexico and other countries. And anyway, why could they not be friends?

  On the last day of class, she called him to her office. She had coffee ready......

• Who Are the People of the Novella
• Sample Dialog Number One
• Sample Dialog Number Two
• Sample Dialog Number Three
• Sample Dialog Number Four
• Sample Dialog Number Five
• Sample Dialog Number Six
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