This book was a much better book than Mambo Kings, in my opinion. A great story of a family that can't quite get over the hump, while others around them find a way...
The Santinios came from rural Cuba to New York City in the 1940's. Hector, their younger son, was born in New York but is haunted by tales of "home"---a mythical Cuba of ancestral memory, beauty, sensuousness, and ease. His struggle toward manhood is inseparable from his struggle to understand his cultural identity and to come to
terms with his father Alejo, a generous, exuberant man whom women love, a hotel cook with ambitious dreams of success---but a man who also disappears for days, and drinks and gambles the family's money away.
terms with his father Alejo, a generous, exuberant man whom women love, a hotel cook with ambitious dreams of success---but a man who also disappears for days, and drinks and gambles the family's money away.
