Summary

In the first line of the novel for the formal section titled “The Land,” the narrator explains, “Ulises Encarnación did not believe in fate” (3), and thus begins the tale of his and his mother and sister’s journey from their Cuba home. At the start, Ulises also expressed his fear of water and the sea, despite the fact his father had christened him after a sailor.

Soledad, Ulises’s mother, foresaw an end to the Soviet Union and, consequently, Cuba. She emigrated to Hartford, Connecticut with her young twin children, Ulises and Isabel, leaving behind her husband Uxbal to continue fighting what she considered a battle already lost against the Fidel Castro communist regime, and joined the thousands flooding the U.S. following the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Her husband had been so devoted to his faith, he held their daughter ransom, only for...