Mingo Dabney

In this fifth and final novel of the Dabney family saga, the reader is introduced to the last of the gallant Dabney clan.  Passionate and restless, Mingo Dabney falls in love with Rafaela Galban, a beautiful Cuban girl who was to her people what Joan of Arc had been to the French. But as Mingo rode his white horse from Lebanon on a frosty night in 1895 to follow Rafaela to Cuba, it was the woman herself he sought to win.  Little did he dream that he would never see his home again, or that his quest for Rafaela was about to plummet him into the midst of flaming revolt on Spain's fortress-island in the Caribbean.


As the lines of Mingo Dabney's destiny crossed Rafaela's, they also ran counter to colorful and unforgettable figures from Cuban history ― General Máximo Gómez, the "Old Fox", who armed a handful of peasants with machetes, and the incredible Antonio Macéo, whose mixed blood shaped him into a strange and formidable leader, a half consecrated fighter for liberty, a half debauchee and rake.


In the pages of this robust and swaggering tale, you will walk arm in arm with Mingo Dabney and Antonio Macéo as they recruit their army of insurrectos under the eyes of the Havana police. You will follow the rebels through the vermin-infested jungle as they fight their running battles with Sagaldo's army of a quarter of a million men. You will thrill to the beat of native drums sounding the battle cry of the revolutionists ― "Venga Mambi! Come on you dirt, and die!" You will see drunken and disorderly scavengers, discarded men without shoes or guns or horses, transformed into heroes, ready to follow El Dabney ― the El Dabney of a hundred miracles, the tree cutter, the fire maker, the healer ― and ready to die for Cuba. You will live on an island aflame, and as Mingo Dabney moves to a thunderous climax in 1896, you will know that you have watched history being made.