Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner, called âshimmeringâ (The New Yorker), âmultilayered and absorbingâ (The New York Times Book Review), and âgorgeously writtenâ (Kirkus Reviews).
Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdomâthree 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 themâthe 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 MaziĂšre, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and RaĂșl 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.