Cuba, 1871. Ramón de Senespleda y Bengoechea, a wealthy planter and Freemason, awaits daybreak at El Morro in Santiago de Cuba, where he will be executed by firing squad for conspiring against the Spanish Crown. As hurricane winds batter the fortress, his name has already become a symbol of ideas poised to remake the island: the abolition of slavery, independence, and a new way of understanding freedom.
On the other side of the story is Jesús Diosdado, a formerly enslaved man turned informer out of greed, who betrayed Senespleda for a medal and a place in the militia. Crushed by remorse, he seeks forgiveness in the confessional of a veteran Jesuit. The penance he receives is as absurd as it is relentless: if he wants to save his soul, he will have to free the man he condemned.
Between religious fanaticism, the storm tearing through the island's east, and the spiral of violence it unleashes, Diosdado's search for redemption becomes a race against time to reach El Morro prison, armed with a machete, a bottle of rum, and a strange mission "ordered by God."
Ideas from Across the Sea is a short historical tale of guilt, faith, politics, and violence, where one man's freedom and another's conscience hang in the balance amid a hurricane, both outside and within.
