LOST INNOCENCES: The Pact
Part I of Lost Innocence, debut novel by Tony Haber-Matos, published October 21, 2026, Oreate-Casa Santiago Press, 400 pages, paperback, 39 chapters, ISBN English 979-8-1703311-3-0, Spanish 979-8-1706881-7-3.
Synopsis
Havana, today. At the Colegio San Jerónimo, three students, Pedro Martínez Pérez, Rafael and Juan, face the university entrance examination that will decide their futures, and fear makes them customers. They pay Eulogio, an unlicensed spiritual practitioner, five hundred dollars each for the examination answers, and Pedro pays his share with his mother's stolen jewelry, letting the family's housekeeper, Yadira, take the blame. Behind Eulogio stands something older and colder, the Northstar Continuity Review, a foundation network built over twelve years to classify children as reliable, uncertain or dangerous, and to convert every act of help into debt, referrals, silence, signatures and other people's names. Journalist Lucía Valdés begins to pull the thread. The boys' crime is real, and the novel never excuses it. Its question is what a society becomes when help itself is the instrument of control, and who gets to decide who deserves it.
About the Author
Cuban-American author and entrepreneur, founder of Qvivo Brands Inc. and Casa Santiago LLC, reviver of Guayabita del Pinar, Santero, and Mi Cristal.
Themes: faith, fear, and the price of silence.
Seven Editions
- English: LOST INNOCENCES
- Spanish: Inocencia Perdida: El Pacto
- Italian: Innocenza Perduta
- French: L'Innocence Perdue
- German: Verlorene Unschuld
- Japanese: 失われた純真
- Portuguese: Inocência Perdida
Buy the Book
Also available at Barnes and Noble.
Links
Instagram: @tonyhaberofficial
Email: jantoniohaber@gmail.com
Phone: 305-497-8620
Who gets to decide
At the Colegio San Jerónimo, an examination decides which students move forward, and the pressure around that one morning reaches into homes, families, and friendships, long before any answer is written down.
Yadira served a family for eight years, and she was dismissed in a boy's place, after jewelry went missing, and after blame settled on the person whose work had kept the house running, day after day, year after year.
Behind that dismissal, and behind the examination itself, stands a network that sorts children by who deserves help, and that sorting turns help into a record, a referral, a signature, and a debt that follows a child from one room to the next.
In Room 7, a boy types, I accept responsibility for what I did, I reject responsibility for what you did with it, and that sentence carries the whole question of the book, because it separates a crime that is real from a system that used that crime to decide who would be believed, who would be protected, and who would be left to carry the cost.