by Himilce Novas
 
The twin protagonists of this rivetting novel emerge from the Cuban countryside like Caribbean Tristans and Isoldes, bound to each other in an eternal embrace that neither politics, nor geography, nor the ill-will of family and society can break.
 
A disarming blend of magic realism and pungent social satire, this extraordinary debut novel is an incandescent tale of love, double incest, mistaken identity and immigrant dreams. In Cuba in the late 1950s, Christian faith healer Arnaldo Saavedra conducts a love affair with Patricia Ona, daughter of the owner of the local sugar mill. Patricia dies giving birth to a daughter, Esmeralda, whom Arnaldo kidnaps and takes to Spanish Harlem. But Arnaldo remains unaware that, shortly before she died, Patricia also gave birth to Esmeralda's twin brother, Juan. Adopted at birth by his wealthy grandparents, the boy eventually moves with them to Miami's Cuban exile community.
 
Throughout her youth, Esmeralda is sexually abused by Arnaldo, who rationalizes the incest as sacred love, a vicarious communion with Patricia. On her 29th birthday, Esmeralda meets Juan?now a melancholy, Yale-educated portrait painter who, on an irresistible impulse, has traveled to New York. Unaware of their common blood, the two fall in love, their incestuous relationship triggering the jealous rage of Arnaldo, who ultimately realizes that his daughter's suitor is his missing son.
 
Poet, playwright and journalist Novas (Everything You Need to Know about Latino History) saddles her wondrous tale with an unsatisfying and disturbing denouement that's tragic and upbeat at once. Even so, her lyrical, fiercely intelligent novel, crammed with mystical phenomena and allusions to pop culture, adroitly probes the pressures facing immigrants adjusting to Yanqui realities.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 
Review
"...lyrical, fiercely intelligent novel..." --Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover
A poor ignorant campesino on a large Cuban plantation becomes innocently embroiled in revolution and an earth-shaking, although brief, affair with his patron's daughter. He escapes persecution with his newborn daughter just before the cataclysm befalls Cuban society.
 
Unknown to father and daughter, a twin brother was born shortly after their escape.
 
Juan grows up pampered and spoiled in the lap of luxury among the wealthiest class of Cubans in Miami, but nevertheless senses that something fundamental is missing in his life of splendors. The beautiful, humble Esmeralda grows up in Spanish Harlem as the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher who honors his deceased wife by abusing the unwitting girl, who resembles her so.
 
Widely seen to have inherited her father's mysticism, Esmeralda becomes the pride and wonder of El Barrio. Then, one day, a handsome young man is drawn to her church, to her life, to her love.
 
All of the spirits, the muses, nature itself, have conspired to bring together the now inseparable pair. Neither the violence of her libidinous father nor the financial resources of Juan's parents can tear the two asunder in this marvelous satire of magic realism and the literature of exile and immigration.