They were finally only a day away from the harbor at Le Havre. From there, another day of travel would take them to the French capital for three months at the Exposition Universelle. Three months of opportunities for her to meet buyers for her rum, Caña Brava. Three months in which to get her and her sister’s future in order, before the two of them were to permanently settle in her father’s ancestral home in Edinburgh.

Unexpectedly finding herself at the helm of her family’s distillery had been…difficult. On more than one occasion, Luz wondered if she was capable of stewarding their legacy into the future. A dream that had begun almost fifty years ago with Luz Alana’s mother Clarise and her grandfather Roberto Benzan. A distillery owned and operated not by the children of Spanish colonials but by a Black family. Where every pair of hands that worked to make the rum—from cutting the sugar cane to preparing the spirits for shipment—was entitled to a share of the profits. Caña Brava from its inception had been an experiment in what industry without exploitation could be, and it had thrived for decades.

Her father, Lachlan Heith, a Scotsman who had arrived in the Caribbean looking for investment opportunities, had been the main investor of the distillery. It had not been long before Lachlan proposed marriage to Clarise, and for the next thirty years poured his life into her and her vision. After her mother’s death, her father had continued their plans to expand Caña Brava’s operations. Their rum was well-known all over the Americas. From the Unites States to Argentina, Caña Brava was coveted for its quality and unique smoky flavor. Lachlan wanted to bring the rum to European markets. His strategy was to elevate the spirit’s image, to replace the bottles of brandy being served in the grand homes of Britain and the Continent with their Gran Reserva. Luz was more interested in making products for everyday people. Her father loved the hands-on operations, being in the distillery with the workers. Luz preferred to think of new ideas. Where he’d wanted to focus on selling their rum to the higher echelons of society, Luz believed the key to future success was to enlist the lifeblood of commerce: women merchants. The modern woman had ideas and preferences of her own and that were distinct from men’s, and Luz saw the potential in focusing on them as a market. Her vision for the future of Caña Brava was not quite what her father had wanted, but he at least recognized her talents and innovative thinking.