First published 2008
Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites grow up in a gated American enclave surrounded by three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane in Cuba's Oriente Province. The children watch their parents drink heavily and conduct affairs while maintaining strict race hierarchies in their tropical paradise. Meanwhile, in Havana, a cabaret dancer becomes involved with Christian de La Mazière, a French agitator hiding a dark past, and they join the political underground. When Fidel and Raúl Castro launch their revolt from the mountains, burning the sugar fields and kidnapping American party guests, the violence that sustains the colony becomes impossible to ignore. K.C. and Everly begin to understand the brutal foundation of their privileged world. Their parents remain oblivious to the historical forces gathering around them, but the children sense what approaches. Set in the years before Castro's revolution drove out the American community in 1958, the novel captures a forgotten world through young eyes that see both the indulgences of colonial life and the betrayals that make it possible.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, political-thriller
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, family-secrets, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Cuba, Oriente Province, Havana
Period: 1958, World War II
354 pages · Kindle Edition · Scribner
Content warnings: colonialism