Broken Paradise
A Novel
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In Broken Paradise Cecilia Samartin offers heart wrenching insight into the tender balance between hope and grief that shapes the immigrant heart and exposes the struggles of everyday people amid political turmoil.
Cuba, 1956: Cousins Nora and Alicia are accustomed to living among Havana's privileged class -- lavish dinners, days at the beach, dances, and dresses.
Their idyllic lives take a turn for the worst after Castro's rise to power. Food becomes scarce, religion is forbidden, and disease is rampant. Alicia stays behind while Nora emigrates to the United States and struggles in an unfamiliar land. Both of their identities are challenged as they try to adapt to the changes forced upon them.
The situation in Cuba deteriorates and Alicia is beset by bad fortune, while Nora painfully assimilates into middle-class U.S. culture. Her heart, however, remains in Cuba. Letters between the cousins track their lives until Alicia's situation becomes so difficult that Nora is forced to return and help. But what she finds in Cuba is like nothing she has ever imagined.
Broken Paradise is an extraordinarily powerful novel about passion, love, and the heart's yearning for home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her interesting but flawed debut, Samartin explores the contrasting fates of two young women after the Cuban revolution Nora Garc a, who escapes to the United States with her family, and her cousin Alicia, who stays behind. The novel is strongest in its first section, which renders the cousins' idyllic and privileged childhood in pre-Castro Havana. The portrayal of Nora and Alicia's friendship is convincing, especially in Nora's simultaneous devotion to her more confident and beautiful cousin. Their time on the beach and at their great-aunt's sugarcane plantation give way to the bombs, televised executions and panic of the revolution. After Nora and her family escape, settling in California, the cousins maintain their friendship over two decades through letters as intimate as their girlhood conversations. Nora returns to Cuba in 1981 to find her childhood Eden destroyed and a very ill Alicia, who has resorted to prostitution to support herself and her daughter, suffering from "the virus." Glaring historical inaccuracies and a hokey climax undermine Nora's return to Cuba, though the book's first half is powerfully realized.
