Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner,
called "shimmering" (The New Yorker), "multilayered and absorbing"
(The New York Times Book Review), and "gorgeously written" (Kirkus
Reviews).
Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province,
where the Americans tend their own fiefdom--three hundred thousand acres
of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If
the rural tropics are a child's dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless
have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around
them--the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and
violence.
In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American
colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La
Mazière, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together
they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel
and Raúl Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane
plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of "yanqui"
revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the
colony humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the
forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come.
Kushner's first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with
the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.
