Book Details
Paperback: 330 pages
Publisher: Beck & Branch Publishers; 1 edition (August 15, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780997264470
ISBN-13: 978-0997264470
ASIN: 0997264470
A Hundred Fires in Cuba by John Thorndike
In the spring of 1956, a young American photographer falls in love with a Cuban line cook in New York. They have a ten-week affair which ends when Immigration arrests and deports him, and by then Clare Miller is pregnant.
Few Americans know the name Camilo Cienfuegos. All Cubans do. He was the most charismatic of Castro's rebel commanders. But Clare, who never hears from him after he's deported, believes he has died in Fidel's invasion of the island. She marries a wealthy Cuban businessman and moves to Havana with her two-year-old daughter, only to discover that her first love is not only still alive, he's now head of the Cuban Army. Clare knows that Camilo likes to dance and drink. He likes women, and too many women like him. Though his courage is legendary, when he comes to visit at night he's afraid of his daughter's moods. He feeds her, he reads to her, he changes her diapers, but for him an all-night march would be easier. Clare worries that he'll never make a good parent, but she cannot resist him. Praise for A Hundred Fires in Cuba
From Foreword Reviews
"The prose is elegantly crafted....A Hundred Fires in Cuba is a sophisticated historical novel that effectively deploys a love triangle to capture the essence of a remarkable figure and the historic period that produced him, laying bare the yearnings of the heart." --Foreword Reviews
"Thorndike weaves a complex love affair into one of the hemisphere's great dramas, the Cuban Revolution. Evocative prose, timeless conflicts, and an intimate story full of surprises." -Natalie Goldberg, author of Wild Mind and Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home
"With A Hundred Fires in Cuba, Thorndike explores his great themes: the mother in extremis, the intrigue of a foreign lover (or two), the beloved child, aging men unmoored, and the complications of passion, passion, passion." -Ted Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere, Coyotes, and Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
"Thorndike's characters know Havana, New York, and Miami well, and his Caribbean story abounds with righteousness, sex, and love." -Tom Miller, author of Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels through Castro's Cuba and Cuba, Hot and Cold
John Thorndike read a thousand novels as a child and always wanted to write one. After four desperate years at a New England prep school, he went to Harvard, studied night and day, wrote some fiction, took an MA at Columbia, then lit out for Latin America. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and two, with his wife, on a backcountry farm in Chile. Eventually he settled with his son in Athens, Ohio, where for ten years his day job was farming. Then it was construction, but always he wrote. His first two books were novels, Anna Delaney’s Child and The Potato Baron. His first memoir, Another Way Home, speaks of his wife’s schizophrenia and his life as a single parent. His second, The Last of His Mind, chronicles his father’s year-long descent into Alzheimer’s. The Washington Post named this a Best Book of 2009, and Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “a beautiful book.” Thorndike’s latest novel, A Hundred Fires in Cuba, is set in Havana and Miami during the early years of the Cuban Revolution, and he’s at work on the next, a half-fictional evocation of his mother’s life.
I grew up in Connecticut, read a thousand novels as a child and always wanted to write one. My mother was a reader, my father an editor and writer, and our house was filled with books. After four desperate years at a New England prep school I went to Harvard, wrote some fiction, studied night and day. Then a master's degree from Columbia, two years in the Peace Corps and a year of doctoral studies at NYU, brought to an end by marriage, parenthood and the delirious Sixties. In 1970 my wife and I moved to an isolated farm in Chile, where we lived for two years, raising chickens, growing potatoes and pursuing the complete back-to-the-land experience. When we divorced in 1974, I wound up with custody of our son and settled with him in Athens, Ohio, where I farmed for ten years, built houses for ten, and wrote.
My first two books were novels. Anna Delaney’s Child
and The Potato Baron. My third book, Another Way Home, is a memoir about my wife’s schizophrenia and the years I spent raising my son. A second memoir, The Last of His Mind, recounts my father’s last year, in which dementia stripped him of memory, language and self-awareness.
My latest book is A Hundred Fires in Cuba, a novel set in Havana during the early years of the Cuban Revolution. You’ll find more about my books, and me, at johnthorndike.com
