Castro-strophic Events in Cuba
George Prentice's fast-paced action and romance novel, Poquito Amigo, presents the complicated political and social climate of post-Cold War Cuba. Ray Randall breaks all the rules as the the hero and narrator of this story, and the American Vice Commander of the U.N. task force assigned to supervise the withdrawal of the former Soviet Union's military forces from Cuba. Ray acquaints us with Cuba's politics and culture, while introducing us to the people of Cuba with whom he becomes intimately involved.
Once in Cuba, Ray takes time to explore the mountain village of Tonada, where he meets a Cuban family named Milano. He learns they are involved in a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro, and the situation is further complicated when Ray falls in love with Bonita, a member of the Milano family. To make matters worse, Bonita has for a long time been engaged to a minister of state in the Castro government, a sleazy politician with his own plans for a coup d'etat.
Almost against his will, Ray finds himself in the midst of gunfire and lost lives, but the coup fails and Castro lives on. The situation is hot and dangerous and Ray's superior, Vladimir Malankov, manages to get this unlikely pair, and all of Bonita's family, out of Cuba and safely off to his Russian homeland. Ray and Bonita marry, and the plot continues with travel and intrigue and the sorting out of the power structure of the new Russian state.
A side issue in this story of romance and danger is the specter of Fidel Castro, who is only a bit player in Poquito Amigo but who exists as a force that won't go away. The novel demonstrates that demonizing Castro doesn't work, and that accepting Fidel as a fact of life is probably the best course of action.
And in the end, this book is not motivated by politics and ideas as much as by people and their emotions.
About the Author. George R. Prentice has been a journalist since World War II. He has worked as a copy editor, a reporter, and assistant city editor, and a managing editor for newspapers large and small all over the United States and Canada. He has also been in broadcast news, as an anchor, a farm news host, and a capital bureau chief. He now lives in Linn, Missouri, where he raises horses and cattle and writes.
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Poquito Amigo
A Novel
George R. Prentice
192 pages, paperback, $10.95
ISBN 1-56474-221-0
For ordering information, click here or phone (800) 662-8351 |
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