An astonishingly wise, ambitious, and riveting novel set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro's revolution - a place that was a paradise for a time and for a few. Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdom. When the cane fields start to burn, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming.

When journalist Daniel Quinn meets Ernest Hemingway at the Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, he has no idea that his own affinity for simple, declarative sentences will change his life radically overnight. So begins Kennedy's tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro.

"Cuba, 1963. Hurricane Flora, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recorded history, is bearing down on the island. Seven women have been forcibly evacuated from their homes and herded into the former governor's mansion ... In a single room on the top floor ... Maria Sirena begins to tell the incredible story of her childhood during Cuba's Third War of Independence; of her father Augustin, a ferocious rebel; of her mother, Lulu, an astonishing woman...

"The hero of this mordant portrayal of life in contemporary Cuba is a black Cuban whose parents were enthusiastic supporters of the Castro Revolution. His father, however, having fallen foul of the regime, is accused of embezzlement and dies of a stroke. Following her husband's death, his mother flees the country and settles in Madrid. Our hero separates from his wife and now spends much of his time in the company of his Russian neighbor, from whom...

"Set in Cuba's Sierra Maestra in the 1950s, in the days leading up to the Revolution--Manchette's unfinished masterpiece with a fearless female protagonist. Four of the ten titles in Jean-Patrick Manchette's celebrated 1970s cycle of hard-boiled novels, which the author originally dubbed neo-polars, or "neo-crime novels," have now appeared in English translation. Manchette is beginning to have a significant following among English-language readers,...