Dancing to "Almendra"
by Mayra Montero

Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber' s chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquín Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo' s death and the mobster' s when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he " knows too much." In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquín gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love.

The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquín's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana' s brilliantly evoked enigmas. In Dancing to "Almendra," Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is " the basis for the clamor of the city, " and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes. Based on the true history of a bewitching city and its denizens, Almendra is the latest " triumph" (Library Journal) from one of Latin America' s most impassioned and intoxicating voices.

ZC2775    Dancing to "Almendra"                                 $14.00

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