Days of Awe

"On New Year's Day 1959, as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, Alejandra San Jose was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution. Fearing the conflict and strife that bubbled up in the streets all around the new family, her parents took Ale and fled to the shores of North Ame [...]
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"On New Year's Day 1959, as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, Alejandra San Jose was born in Havana, entering the world through the heart of revolution. Fearing the conflict and strife that bubbled up in the streets all around the new family, her parents took Ale and fled to the shores of North America." "Ale grew up in Chicago amid a close community of refugees who lived with the hope that one day Castro would fall and they could return to their Cuban homes. Though Ale was intrigued by the specter of Havana that colored her life as a child, her fascination eventually faded in her teens until all that remained was her profound respect for the intricacies of the Spanish language and the beautiful work her father did as a linguist and translator." "When her own job as an interpreter takes her back to Cuba, Ale is initially unmoved by the import of her return - until she stumbles upon a surprising truth: The San Joses, ostensibly Catholics, are actually Jews. They are conversos who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition." Enlightened by a whole new vision of her past and her culture, Ale makes her way back through San Jose history, uncovering new fragments of truth about the relatives who struggled with their own identities so long ago. Ale is lured one more time back to Cuba to make amends with the ancestral demons still lurking there - to translate her father's troubling youthful experiences into the healing language of her own heart.