"Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy" is a little slow at first. Like the Revolution, and the revulsion to the Revolution; it builds a world of memories of a place and time that are gone. It does it now as Latin America becomes stronger and more important. It does it at a time when US-Cuban relations are bound to change because Fidel may be the Maximum Leader but he cannot live forever. Nor can our crumbling blockade. In a postscript Eire says "the most immediate trigger..." for him to write this "...was the Eliàn Gonzalez affair". The little boy internationally battled over who had been sent to live in Miami as was Eire.

It is a book of history (not surprisingly), a bit of philosophy and religion, and a story that becomes hard to put down. Especially for a boy who was a boy at the same time. But boys are always the same. There are stories of firecrackers and shoplifting and getting in trouble even if not in the big breadfruit battle. He makes it real and funny and frightening and touching.

The Cuban refugees in their over-reaction to the horror of totalitarianism have a tendency to be overly conservative. One poll this year showed them going for the junior president from Texas, a wannabe Maximum Leader. But the story tells me why they feel that way. It tells of the Bay of Pigs which I never quite understood and for many readers it will be a new take on what is now almost ancient history. Therefore, his story of a childhood in Havana waiting to see snow is real and needed, by him as catharsis and by us for a look into that time and place. And then to rejoice for him for creating his successful life that he had to wrench from dislocation and loneliness.