The Tilting House

Lamazares (The Sugar Island) sets this immersive bildungsroman against the backdrop of Cuba’s economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s 1993, and 16-year-old Yuri is being raised by her aunt Ruth following her mother’s death four years earlier (Ruth has been unable to contact Yuri’s long-lost father in the United States). When a 34-year-old woman named Mariela arrives from the U.S., Ruth initially claims she is her long-lost daughter, sent to America in the 1960s as part of Operation Pedro Pan, when unaccompanied children were evacuated for better opportunities. Eventually, Yuri learns that Mariela, a photographer and painter, is actually her older sister, and has returned to Cuba to make art. After Ruth is arrested and held in jail on unspecified charges, Yuri gravitates toward the comparatively free-spirited Mariela, who hosts salons in Ruth’s house. The author offers a nuanced view of the country’s turmoil during the so-called Special Period, when residents faced a vertiginous mix of extreme poverty and newfound opportunity, and the revolution’s “traitor worms” began to return. The narrative ends with an affecting scene set during the Cuban thaw of 2015, with Yuri exploring her family’s fate. Readers will be moved. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman. (July)