Havana Dreams: A Story of Cuba

Title: Havana Dreams: A Story of Cuba
Author: Wendy Gimbel
ISBN: 9780679430537
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1998
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Condition: Used: Very Good
Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.

Biography 1551801

Publisher Description:
The riveting account of four generations of Cuban women whose lives the author illuminates into a picture both intimate and historical of Cuba in our century.

In the Revuelta family, Wendy Gimbel has found a perfect source of both information and revelation. At the center is Naty: born in 1925, American educated, a Batista socialite who became intoxicated with Castro and his revolution (here are the letters they exchanged while he was in jail). Although her husband and daughter immigrated to the United States after Castro's victory, Naty remained in Cuba to raise her second child -- Castro's unacknowledged daughter -- and withstood Castro's withering dismissal of her. Naty's mother, an unregenerate reactionary; Naty's two daughters, one of whom settles well into life in America, and the other never recovers from her father's denial of her; and her granddaughter, whom Naty hopes against reason will return to the island -- these are the lives that complete this extraordinary saga. Havana Dreams is a book that leaves us with an indelible impression of familial obligation and illicit love; of the heady and then doomed romanticism of revolution; and of the profound effect of Cuba's contemporary history upon the lives of its people.

The Revuelta women are singularly fascinating, and Wendy Gimbel's story of their lives and times is a wholly remarkable book.