Setting

The Cubans in this novel live side by side with the past. In Havana, Reina lives in the apartment where she was raised. Dangling from the chandelier in her father's study is a bird's nest; Reina lives "amidst the debris of her childhood." To Ignacio and Blanca Agüero, the natural world of Cuba is like the Garden of Eden. "The Agüeros often imagined what Cuba must have been like before the arrival of the Spaniards, whose dogs, cats, and rats multiplied prodigiously and ultimately wreaked havoc with the island's indigenous creatures. Long ago, Cuba had been a naturalist's dream." In an interview in the Santa Fe New Mexican in 1997, Garcia said, "Cuba has always lived in my imagination. I have only spent a half of a month in Cuba since I was 2 1/2, so I don't have much to go on in that sense . . . to...