In \Waiting For Snow in Havana,"" author Carlos Eire takes his readers on a sentimental journey back to the Cuba of the '50s, a Cuba nothing like the Communist regime of today. Rather, Eire writes of the often-mourned jewel of the Caribbean, Cuba in the days before Castro ""revolutionized"" it.
As a little boy growing up in a fairly prestigious family, Eire had a typical??childhood in which he was allowed to roam free and play with firecrackers and get into rock-throwing fights with his friends, all of which he chronicles in this book. He speaks fondly of the shenanigans he and his friends would pull, such as the time they found a tree full of over-ripe breadfruit and got into a Caribbean version of a snowball fight. Another time they strapped a lizard to a can, set the can atop a stick of dynamite and tried to send the lizard into outer space. That lizard is still unaccounted for.
Intertwined with these memories of childhood are those of the shifting political climate in Cuba and how it affected him. Since his parents were prominent in the community (his father was a judge), they were in danger when Castro took control.
Eventually, the political scene became so treacherous that Eire's mother sent Carlos and his older brother to the United States in what was later called ""Operation Pedro Pan,"" the mass exodus of children from Cuba to the United States. While they awaited their mother, Eire and his brother were placed in different foster homes. Both boys worked hard and tried to overcome the racial tension and sudden loss of financial security and family.
For Carlos, it was a matter of going from a judge's son to being a ""spic."" Yet he took it all in stride, and managed to survive the years until his mother was able to join them. He recalls one winter when he suffered from whooping cough, and yet never missed a day of work at the hotel in Chicago where he was a dishwasher.
The novel is extremely well written, although it suffers from one flaw: the various stories and memories that Eire shares are not presented in chronological order. One moment he speaks of the freezing cold in the Midwest, and in the next he is back in Cuba, playing with a peashooter and laughing in Spanish. While this makes for a more stark contrast between his life before and after he escaped to America, it can be somewhat confusing.
On the whole, however, Eire's story is one of personal triumph and national devastation, of laugh-out-loud humor and tear-jerking sorrow. It is a testament to the bravery and strength of those who have been forced out of their homeland, and a condemnation of the corrupt forces that destroyed his country. Overall, it is a brilliant read.
""Waiting for Snow in Havana"" is published by Simon and Schuster.
