A Cuban American woman searches for her long-lost mother and fights to restore a beautiful but crumbling Art Deco home in the heart of Havana in this moving, immersive new mystery, perfect for fans of Of Women and Salt. Newly widowed baker Mercedes Spivey flies from Miami to her native Cuba in 2019 to care for her ailing paternal grandmother. Mercedes’s life has been shaped by loss, beginning with the mysterious unsolved disappearance of her mother when Mercedes was a little girl. Returning to Cuba revives Mercedes’s hopes of finding her mother as she attempts to piece together the few scraps of information she has. Could her mother still be alive? Thirty-three years earlier, in 1986, an American college student with endless political optimism falls deliriously in love with a handsome Cuban soldier while on a spontaneous visit to the island. She decides to stay permanently, but soon discovers that nothing is as it seems in Havana. The two women’s stories proceed in parallel as Mercedes gets closer to the truth about her mother, uncovering shocking family secrets in the process . . .
In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
In her new compilation of short fiction The Astral Plane: Stories of Cuba, the Southwest and Beyond, Teresa Dovalpage offers a diversity characters in the midst of decisions and transitions. In the presence of South Indian Yogis, New Mexican Santeros, Afro-Cuban Orishas, Edgar Allen Poe, The Beatles and La Llorona, the author details moments in the lives of Cubans, Nuevo Mexicanos and Anglo-Americans. The stories are sometimes comical and often tragic but always engaging. In each one, Dovalpage reminds us that any choice we make, from deciding to leave the country, to walking around the block to engaging in a conversation with a total stranger, could become momentous. In the blink of an eye, the insignificant turns historic. Although each story is self contained and can be read independently, it is when they are read together that they are most affective, unsettling, comic and heartfelt. Characters, storylines, and motifs reappear from one tale to the next, informing and enriching each other. While every story is distinct, these protagonists, who are from varied cultural and economic backgrounds, share common struggles as they stumble in search for a way to escape or a place to land, to live, to be who they are. There are no heroes in these stories but they are not villains either, much like in everyday life. Oddly, that is what is most comforting, for lack of a better word, about The Astral Plane: Stories of Cuba, the Southwest and Beyond, at least for this reader. Dovalpage's characters exude an unapologetic normalcy in their flaws that even toothless false prophets, calculating serial killers, conniving prostitutes, and scheming mothers-in-law become endearing in the end. (Carolina Caballero LatinoLA, February 2, 2012) The stories are thoroughly Cuban, original, delightful, and unexpected. In this cohesive collection, Ms. Dovalpage’s prodigious talent takes us on a dazzling journey of high drama, whimsical imagery, nail-biting suspense, and laugh-out-loud hilarity. Along the way she lays bare the reality of life in Cuba and totally debunks the myths of the Castro Revolution. One favorite passage includes a lyrical, evocative description of El Malecón that made me weep with longing for the sights, sounds, and smells of that drive; a paragraph later I erupted in laughter at a character’s offhand comment. This savory collection is certain to become a favorite read, highly recommended. (February 4, 2012) Teresa Dovalpage’s latest collection of short stories The Astral Plane features a set of stories where the characters have a tenuous connection to each other. The stories showcase how the Cuban Hispanic diaspora spread with contacts with former relatives, escapees via the rafts, and with contacts with visitors and universities that can travel to Cuba with ease. Thus, stories take place partly in Cuba, in Miami, and in Albuquerque. Throughout the tales, the change brought about by Fidel Castro seep out in details about the way people live, the food they eat, the political pressures to conform, the desire for US Cash and lifestyle and the turn to the Santeria religion. Teresa Dovalpage constructs her stories with a heavy dose of metaphor that is artfully shared by taking a distant point of view and by carefully constructing her plots. The plots unfold in a chatty fashion where you learn about the people that surround a character, their family, their friends, and their style of life. Readers will enjoy the unusual mix of character types, settings, and plots that can introduce them to a politically strong minority population in the United States. They make a potent case for democracy and capitalism. (Sheri Fresonke Harper The Compulsive Reader, March 2012) The Astral Plane is the latest book by Cuban author Teresa Dovalpage. Ziva Sahl describes the stories in Dovalpage's collection as, 'thoroughly Cuban, original, delightful, and unexpected.' I had the chance to read the book and can only say that The Astral Plane is another fine accomplishment by one of our most talented Latina writers these days. (Mayra Calvani The Examiner, May 22, 2012)
A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Teresa Dovalpage’s deliciously twisted novella, set on a Caribbean cruise, showcases the dark—sometimes deadly—side of celebrity. Former Havana detective Marlene Martínez, now happily running a bakery in Miami, has booked a week-long cruise to Mexico and the Caribbean with her niece, Sarita, as the girl’s quinceañera present. Sarita is beyond thrilled to discover that a Cuban telenovela star, Carloalberto, is also aboard for the trip. But even while trying to keep her niece away from the unsettlingly handsome actor, Marlene gets the feeling Carloalberto is in some kind of trouble—he is constantly on edge, and shady characters seem to find their way to him. When murder occurs aboard the North Star, Marlene will rely on instincts she hoped never to use again.
In Cuban Revelations, Marc Frank offers a first-hand account of daily life in Cuba at the turn of the twenty-first century, the start of a new and dramatic epoch for islanders and the Cuban diaspora. A U.S.-born journalist who has called Havana home for almost a quarter century, Frank observed in person the best days of the revolution, the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the great depression of the 1990s, the stepping aside of Fidel Castro, and the reforms now being devised by his brother. Examining the effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Frank analyzes why Cuba has entered an extraordinary, irreversible period of change and considers what the island's future holds. The enormous social engineering project taking place today under Raúl's leadership is fraught with many dangers, and Cuban Revelations follows the new leader's efforts to overcome bureaucratic resistance and the fears of a populace that stand in his way. In addition, Frank offers a colorful chronicle of his travels across the island's many and varied provinces, sharing candid interviews with people from all walks of life. He takes the reader outside the capital to reveal how ordinary Cubans live and what they are thinking and feeling as fifty-year-old social and economic taboos are broken. He shares his honest and unbiased observations on extraordinary positive developments in social matters, like healthcare and education, as well as on the inefficiencies in the Cuban economy.
The dazzling true story of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated Hispanic actresses and her daughter’s search for answers. Cuba, 1936: When Estelita Rodriguez sings in a hazy Havana nightclub for the very first time, she is nine years old. From then on, that spotlight of adoration — from Havana to New York’s Copacabana and then Hollywood — becomes the one true accomplishment no one can take from her. Not the 1933 Cuban Revolution that drove her family into poverty. Not the revolving door of husbands and the fickle world of film. Not even the tragic devastation of Castro’s revolution that rained down on her loved ones. Thirty years later, her young adult daughter, Nina Rodriguez, is blindsided by her mother’s mysterious, untimely death. Seeking answers no one else wants to hear, the grieving Nina navigates the troubling, opulent memories of their life together and discovers how much Estelita sacrificed to live the American dream on her own terms. Based on true events and exclusive interviews with the real Nina Rodriguez, Find Me in Havana weaves two unforgettable voices into one extraordinary journey that explores the unbreakable bond between mother and child, and the ever-changing landscape of self-discovery.
“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post
