In
1958, nineteen-year-old Elisa is the daughter of a sugar baron and
member of Cuba’s high society where she is largely sheltered from the
country’s growing political unrest—until she finds herself
involved in a clandestine affair with an impassioned revolutionary that
changes the course of her life.
Click HERE to read Chapter 1
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Chanel Speaks:
In 1967, my grandparents and father left
Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution and sought refuge in the United States.
They arrived in Florida with the hope that exile would be temporary. Fifty
years later, my family has built a life here, thrived in the country that
welcomed them. But despite the intervening years, the subtle shifts in policy,
and Castro’s death, my family has been unable to return to Cuba. My grandmother
died dreaming of her homeland, and her ashes sit in an urn, waiting for us to
take her back to the country she loved so faithfully.
When my family left Cuba, they were unable
to take valuables with them, were forced to leave behind mementos, wedding
rings, family photos, pieces of our family history. In an attempt to preserve
their legacy, they hid those items in the walls of their home and buried them
in their backyard for when they could return to the island. At the time, exile
seemed temporary and the hope that drove their actions gripped me as a writer.
I was left with the question:
If you were forced to leave your home, and
you had a box in which to place your most prized possessions, what would you
choose to save for the day you would return?
Growing up, Cuba was part of my daily life—the
stories my family told, the language we spoke, the music we listened to, the
food we ate, the hope that one day we would return instilled in me from an
early age. These stories, this version of Cuba given to me by my family,
nurtured in exile, became the foundation for Next Year in Havana, the novel inspired by the idea of a hidden box
and the secrets it protected for decades.
Next
Year in Havana alternates between the modern day
story of a Cuban-American woman honoring her grandmother’s last request to
scatter her ashes in the country from which she was exiled and her
grandmother’s experience in 1958, living in a country on the cusp of
revolution. As these women face heartbreaking choices amid a tumultuous
political climate, the novel explores the universal themes of family, love, and
patriotism. This book contains a piece of my family’s history. Thanks for
letting me share it with all of you.