In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana—exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro’s revolution. Winner of the National Book Award, this memoir looks at Latin America from a child’s formative experience.
... succeeds ... [Eire] has done a splendid job. The memoir is masterfully written, bursting with wonderful details and images and populated by characters so well described that they seem to be sitting next to you on the couch ... Eire has a leisurely, conversational way of telling his story ... The book has its flaws, but once you've fallen under the spell of the author's charming, sympathetic, sorrowful voice, they all seem minor ... without that love, both for his family and for the country he left behind, it seems unlikely that Eire could have written such an extraordinary book.
... complex, introspective ... In this open, honest, and at times angry memoir, Eire bares his soul completely and captivates the reader in the process.
... beautifully fashioned ... As imaginatively wrought as the finest piece of fiction, the book abounds with magical interpretations of ordinary boyhood events ... Eire looks beyond the literal to see the mythological themes inherent in the epic struggle for identity that each of our lives represents ... As painful as Eire's journey has been, his ability to see tragedy and suffering as a constant source of redemption is what makes this book so powerful.
