Everly Lederer

In 1952, Everly Lederer moves to Cuba from Tennessee with her parents and two sisters. Her father has been hired to work in a management position at the American nickel mines in Nicaro, recently reopened to provide the much-needed metal for the Korean War. Everly is an intelligent but strange child, often called morbid by her mother. Her appearance is awkward but sets her apart from the other blond, wealthy American children; as K.C. describes her at their first meeting, “Everly was about eight, cross-eyed, with these thick glasses, fire-red hair, couldn’t be in the sun for thirty seconds before she burned pink as a boiled lobster, and feisty” (92). She loves to play the piano, and has a great talent for it, though she only will play somber music in a minor key.

The move to Cuba is incredibly exciting to eight-year-old Everly, and she quickly...