Then, too, I was a political science major in college and studied Fidel–I know how that society works, so the shocks weren’t there for me. The 1958 story is just so raw and so real that a merely “good” modern-day storyline pales by comparison. I LOVED this book, but Marisol’s story was just-too-close to the hackneyed love at first sight trope that I’m finding so tiresome these days. She has a cliched romance and, naturally, discovers the secrets that drive the story. The second part of the story is the fairly predictable modern-day granddaughter wanting to know more about grandma Elisa. All the characters in the 1958 story are so alive, so real that I had to remind myself that this is a novel and not a memoir. Their romance is powerful and believable: “In one step, I know power” (p. Elisa and her revolutionary risk all to see each other.

97).Īs the three eldest Perez sisters navigate love and coming-of-age at such a fraught time, family loyalty is stretched almost too taunt when brother Alejandro goes against his powerful father. “Loyalty is a complicated thing–where does family fit on the hierarchy? Above or below country ?” (p. In our world, you marry for status, for wealth, for family” (p. “We are the source of our mother’s greatest pride and also the instrument of all her ambitions” (p. “Our father runs his businesses, but our mother runs our home with a jewel-covered fist” (p. Fidel Castro promises a better life for the ordinary people of Cuba thereby making Elisa’s father a prime target. Batista, the dictator who keeps Cuba for the foreigners and his own stable of powerful, wealthy backers, is about to be overthrown. Havana in 1958 is electrically charged with energy. She is the type girl who can “hear the whisper of dress floating in the breeze ” (p.174). Thank you, Reese, for not picking depressing, dysfunctional, self-loathing tomes like Oprah!Ĭuban sugar magnate’s daughter, Elisa Perez, is a 19-year old, sheltered society beauty, whose world is about to be changed forever by two men: Fidel Castro and Pablo, a lawyer turned revolutionary for Fidel. My Mom said “You must read this,” and she was right! If this book is any indication of her book picking talents, I’ll be reading more of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club picks.

When we left cuba book review