Author Description

The story opens in contemporary Miami, where a young Cuban woman has for years been searching in vain for details of her birth mother. All she knows of her past is that her grandfather had fled the turbulent Havana of the 1960s for Miami with her in tow, and that pinned to her sweater - possibly by her mother - were a few treasured lines of a Pablo Neruda poem. These facts remain her only tenuous links to her history, until a mysterious parcel arrives in the mail. Inside the soft, worn box are layers of writings and photographs. Fitting these pieces together with insights she gleans from several trips back to Havana, the daughter reconstructs the life of her mother, her youthful affair with the enigmatic Che, and the child she bore by the handsome rebel.