Description

Chosen by The Brand New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Entire Year From the Pulitzer prize winning writer of Ironweed, a remarkable story of love and innovation from among America's best authors. When correspondent Daniel Quinn fulfills Ernest Hemingway in the Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, he's no indisputable fact that their own appreciation for simple, declarative sentences may change his life significantly overnight.So starts Bill Kennedy's newest book-an account of innovative interest, brave writing, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the unbelievable rise of Fidel Castro. Quinnis legendary trip carries him through the clubs and woodlands of Cuba and in to the newsrooms and racially-charged streets of Albany to the day Robert Kennedy is fatally shot in 1968. The journey provides Quinn, and his unique but unknown Cuban partner, Renata, a debutante groundbreaking, face-to-face with the darkest areas of human character and illuminates the ability of love-in the clear presence of death.Kennedy genuinely collects together an improbable cast of vibrant characters in a spectacular journey saturated in music, mysticism, and homicide-a destitute dark alcohol, a significant Catholic priest, a senile guardian, a terminally-ill punk story, the imperious mayor of Albany, Bing Crosby, Hemingway, Castro, and a ragtag outfit of radicals, hookers, provocateurs, and underworld heavies.