Books

For her debut novel, Los Angeles-based author Rachel Kushner intricately and intelligently weaves a multilayered quilt of nationalities and social classes, adolescence and adulthood, even good and evil.

FILE/The Associated Press

Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro addresses a crowd in front of the presidential palace in Havana, Cuba, in 1959.

She examines humanity and business, politics and deception during a time in Cuba so pivotal that sometimes the fictional work reads like a true account of events. That's because it's based on history. Telex From Cuba is set mostly in 1958, the year that Fidel Castro and his army of rebels successfully revolted against President Batista and his regime. Ms. Kushner takes us to Preston, the American enclave where the United Fruit Co. has its sugar cane plantation, and nearby Nicaro, where more Americans run the nickel mines.

Power and paradise mingle here, especially for the wealthy families with the means to employ Cuban servants and Haitian cane-cutters. These clans (the Stites, the Lederers, the Carringtons and the Mackeys) enjoy the Cuban delicacies, from the climate to the cooking, while remaining a few steps ahead and above those whose native country they've commandeered.

All is as handsome as a hibiscus until the insurgents make their presence known. A massive sugar cane fire is set just after the eldest Stites son vanishes. Del Stites has joined the revolutionaries, leaving his younger brother K.C. to question the decisions of his sibling.

In the mix is sadistic French agitator Christian de la Maziére, a man with a methodical yet insatiable appetite for sex and violence. We also have Everly Lederer, who, like K.C. Stites, is coming of age amid the turmoil. Everly and K.C. flirt with a bit of first love. But their physical and emotional development is hindered by parents too blind to see the severity of the uprising until it's almost too late.

The crux of Ms. Kushner's Telex From Cuba is the author's mother, who actually lived the life depicted in the book. Through family letters, photos, journals and historical research, the author has pieced together an authentic tale. She paints a seemingly accurate portrait of Castro during that era, a man passing himself off as a messiah ready to save Cuba, but one who's dangerously tyrannical beneath the surface.

I was born in Cuba seven years after Castro took control. I left my birthplace as a toddler. But I remember my father telling me stories of Castro's hypnotic power over the Cuban people. He recounted how Castro fooled many into thinking he would save them from Batista, only to put them in greater peril later.

Reading Ms. Kushner's richly detailed tome filled my mind with clearer pictures of my motherland.

Rachel Kushner

(Scribner, $25)

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