The dictator is dead and suddenly the exiles can return. So begins Pablo Medina's most compelling work to date, a novel set on Barata, the imaginary Caribbean island (not unlike Cuba). Sent to the United States at the age of twelve, Felix Nogara has remained attached to his native land through dissident fellow exiles and through his family legacy. Thirty-eight years later, he returns, and with a wise and sardonic cab driver as his guide, he travels through the ruined landscape to recover his lost history, his lost happiness: "Returning to Barata was like going back to Eden. It was like showing God who was really in control." With wit, imagination, and visionary insight, Medina takes the reader to an island in chaos in order to explore the deepest regions of an exile's heart.