Sharing a hot night with a giant hammerhead shark; marching to protest the Dictator Batista; leading classmates to safety through the smoke and terror of a bomb, the world Liana Fernandez de Castro grew up in was violent and often terrifying, but this daughter of a distinguished old Spanish-Cuban family still found time to recognize, value and delineate a whole gallery of characters who vary from fascinating to uproarious. Praxedes, the charming entrepreneur who stood the fable of the ant and the grasshopper on its head; Elena, the sullen Galician who returned evil for good, undone by the very revolution she had envisioned; Roberta, psychopathic and madly entertaining daughter of a dreaded official in the Police Force; Caco, guardian and pillar of her childhood, bravely denying the possibility of age or infirmity; Giny, angelic friend caught in a tragic web woven by a scoundrel who hid behind the facade of the revolution; a great skipper coaxing a beloved boat through a hurricane; Miguel, the repairman whose manual skills outweighed the mob-hysteria of the revolution, and, on a larger stage, the great Cienfuegos, peasant-soldier-hero of the revolution who was almost certainly murdered by Castro, together with Che Guevara and the real reasons he was forced to leave Havana. These and others spring to life in a virtual torrent of images that illuminate the lost world of old, pre-revolutionary Cuba together with the convulsions and uproar of change. (Among the images, Castro was almost murdered during his triumphant entry into Havana while Liana stood three feet from the man from whom the gun was wrested ) As a novel, this would strain reality - but it's all true