Overview
"Here begins a marvelous adventure," says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The array of characters is marvelously vivid. Matera's portrait of present-day Cuba, with its hardships, shortages and corruption, is an education in itself. ... And by the way, the plot and resolution of the mystery--what did actually happen to the heroine's mother--is intricate and convincing."
Attorney Willa Jansson's mother has long been in the habit of organizing or joining political protests. After seventeen arrests, fourteen convictions, and eleven stints in jail, she surprises no one--least of all her doting but exasperated daughter--by flouting the Trading With The Enemies Act to illegally visit Cuba. But when the rest of the lefty tour group returns from Havana without her mother, Willa fears her bleeding heart has gotten her into more trouble than Willa can get her out of.
Risking her career and her passport, Willa rushes to Cuba to retrace her mother's steps. Under the wing of newfound reporter friends--or are they CIA agents?--Willa soon finds herself in Havana neighborhoods tourists rarely visit, seeing things Americans are not supposed to see. Manipulated, misled, and nearly arrested, Willa is a whisper away from triggering an international incident.
When people start disappearing and dying because of Willa's search, the U.S. State Department, the Cuban Interior Ministry, and Willa's old flame from San Francisco Homicide step in. With two angry governments and a ruthless killer close on her heels, Willa tries to keep herself out of Cuban and American prisons at least long enough to find and rescue her mother.
The Houston Chronicle says that "The beauty of Matera's writing is that the story, fun as it is, doesn't shortcut a shrewd social commentary on the current state of the Cuban Revolution and U.S. policy toward that country."
