Author Description

Cuban Transplant is the autobiography of Matías Travieso-Diaz, a gifted boy who grew up poor in Havana, Cuba until his life was put on hold by the Castro regime and its conflict with the United States. After a series of miraculous events, he came to America in 1963 as a refugee, and was able to complete his education - thanks to assistance from the U.S. Government - through the receipt of a Ph.D. in Engineering. After working in the aerospace industry, he enrolled in a major law school, graduated with a Law degree, and practiced as a partner in a Washington, D.C. law firm until his retirement. He then began a literary career as a fiction writer, writing and publishing nearly two hundred short stories and a novel. The author describes in detail his unique experiences in leaving Cuba, adapting to the Midwest, and going through a series of personal and career changes. Matías was still single in his mid-thirties, when he met and fell in love with a woman of the same age; after an arduous courtship, she became his loving wife of forty years. Together, they traveled to Russia to adopt and rear a 10-year- old orphan. After losing his wife to cancer, the author and his daughter have striven to adapt to living together, experiencing a joint grieving process that is still ongoing while he navigates the final years of a prolific life.