When We Left Cuba

February 18, 2019
Cleeton (Next Year in Havana) will break hearts with this exquisitely wrought tale of a privileged girl exiled from her country and the powerful American politician who changes the course of her life. After Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, Beatriz Perez and her family sought refuge in Palm Beach, Fla., and tried to rebuild. But Beatriz craves revenge: the Cuban leader was responsible for her twin brother’s murder, and she believes that—with the help of a fellow exile, Eduardo Diaz, and her recruitment into the CIA—she can avenge that death. When U.S. Senator Nicholas Randolph Preston III enters her world at a Palm Beach society ball, she loses her heart quickly to the man who will change her life. Cleeton’s twisting, intricate plot of love and revenge takes Beatriz to such locations as Harlem and London (where she faces off with a trained Cuban intelligence officer) and finally to a potentially deadly meeting with Castro in Cuba. Tiny glimpses of the present day are woven throughout the novel, giving readers hints of what became of two idealistic souls. This is a beautiful and utterly transporting novel. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

March 15, 2019
Cleeton continues the stories of the Perez sisters, introduced in Next Year in Havana (2018), this time featuring the firebrand sister Beatriz, who bookends her first-person story with a prologue and an epilogue that take place on the night of Fidel Castro's death, November 25, 2016. In between, this passionate novel set in the 1980s dramatizes Beatriz's laser focus on making Castro pay for her brother's death and her family's exile by scheming with members of exiled Cuban groups, including Eduardo, a handsome friend from her youth, and a slippery CIA operative. While the Perez family struggles to maintain its social standing in Miami, Beatriz seeks intrigue and falls into an illicit and impossible love affair with charming Nick, a Kennedy-like figure already engaged in a match that will be politically favorable. In often purple prose, Cleeton offers plenty of melodrama to ponder, and fans of the first novel will be thrilled.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)