Book Review: Next Year in Havana | Chanel Cleeton

A mesmerizing and poignant story of family, love, and loss spanning two timelines in Miami and Havana. Chanel Cleeton’s Next Year in Havana, is a gripping story of a Cuban-American woman who travels to Havana and discovers a family secret hidden for over half a century.

About the Book

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest–until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.

Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

Review

A bit of historical fiction, a dash of romance, a sprinkle of mystery, and a lot of family drama mix together in Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick, Next Year in Havana. There are some heavy themes in this book, as it delves into the atrocities of war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

For those who don’t know much about Cuba’s history (and I’m no expert myself), you’ll learn a lot about what the Cuban people have gone through whether they stayed in Cuba or fled under the regime changes and dictatorships. Cleeton did a wonderful job balancing the sad social and economic history of the Cuban people with the central stories of Marisol and Elisa.

The story is told in two timelines, Havana in 1958 and Havana in 2017. In 1958, Elisa Perez is nineteen and had been born and raised in Cuba. Elisa had the benefit of being part of the wealthy class in Cuba, and was sheltered from much of the political unrest growing in the country. She’s lived in a world she thought was safe, cushioned by wealth and status.

“We are useless birds in a gilded cage…”

When she meets a revolutionary named Pablo at a dinner party, its love at first sight. But Pablo stands for everything her family is against. As things escalate rapidly in Cuba, Elisa and her family are forced to flee to Miami, never to return to Havana.

In Miami in 2017, Elisa’s granddaughter Marisol heads to Cuba for the first time when travel reopens between the two countries. Marisol is following through on her late grandmother’s wishes to spread her ashes in Havana. Cuba Is still under a dictatorship, and Marisol will need to be careful on her visit. After arriving, Marisol stays with her grandmother’s friend Ana Rodriguez and meets her grandson, Luis.

Luis doesn’t shy away from sharing the inhumane treatment of people in Cuba, and how life has been hard despite living in a place that appears to be paradise. Through Ana, Marisol also begins to learn more about her grandmother. When Marisol finds letters that Elisa exchanged with Pablo, she realizes that her grandmother had a life that Marisol knew nothing about.

“We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.”

Often I prefer one timeline over another in historical fiction novels that are told in two different POV, but in this case I found the stories so intertwined, I enjoyed both timelines. Though Marisol has her own story, much of her timeline is about Elisa and learning about her grandmother as well as about what life was like for the people of Cuba.

I often forgot that Elisa wasn’t a real person from history, she was so well-developed and had such a rich story. I’d imagine that Cleeton did a lot of research, so Elisa is surely based at least in some part on real stories of Cuban expatriates who were forced to flee to Miami during the crest of the rising political unrest.

There are strong parallels between parts of Elisa’s and Marisol’s stories, particularly in their love stories. Pablo and Luis have a lot in common, they both have a boldness to stand up (as much as they can) against the way the people of Cuba are forced to live. It must run in the family to be attracted to hot, rogue, Cuban men!

I felt surprised by how little I know about the history of Cuba, their revolution, and the string of dictators that greatly impacted life for the people of Cuba. Despite the ban on travel to Cuba for Americans, many Cubans fled to Miami and have become part of our country. It seems I’m not alone in wondering why the education system in the U.S. shied away from this, and if there was fear of blowback even from the relative safety of our separate nation.

This is an engrossing, evocative story exploring the rich history of Cuba and the sacrifices people were forced to make to survive.