From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed, a dramatic novel
of love and revolution from one of America's finest writers
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 William Kennedy's latest novel--a tale of revolutionary
intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running
gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro.
Quinn's epic journey carries him through the nightclubs and jungles of
Cuba and into the newsrooms and racially charged streets of Albany on
the day Robert Kennedy is fatally shot in 1968. The odyssey brings
Quinn, and his exotic but unpredictable Cuban wife, Renata, a debutante
revolutionary, face-to-face with the darkest facets of human nature and
illuminates the power of love in the presence of death.
Kennedy masterfully gathers together an unlikely cast of vivid
characters in a breathtaking adventure full of music, mysticism, and
murder--a homeless black alcoholic, a radical Catholic priest, a senile
parent, a terminally ill jazz legend, the imperious mayor of Albany,
Bing Crosby, Hemingway, Castro, and a ragtag ensemble of radicals,
prostitutes, provocateurs, and underworld heavies. This is an
unforgettably riotous story of revolution, romance, and redemption, set
against the landscape of the civil rights movement as it challenges the
legendary and vengeful Albany political machine.
