3.5***

Hijuelos’ debut novel spans five decades, telling the story of the Santinio family from 1929 in Cuba to 1975 in New York. Alejo and Mercedes emigrate to New York City from Cuba in 1943, where he finds work as a cook in a fancy hotel and she tries to make a life in an apartment so far from her childhood estate. They have two sons, Horacio and Hector, who struggle with their own identities; are they Americans or Cubans? It is a love story, a family saga, a coming-of-age story, and a novel of the immigrant experience.

Alejo is a man who has never met a stranger. He is exuberant and generous, always the life of the party, a loyal friend and a ladies’ man. But he is consumed by want. His life is not what he envisioned and he cannot understand how things went so wrong. He drinks to drown his sorrows and descends into melancholy. He doesn’t recognize how his actions push his children away, when all he wants is to be recognized as THE MAN and a FATHER to be respected.

Mercedes is a woman who lives in the past. She cannot let go of past glories of life with her father when she was a young girl. She loves Alejo, but the man he has become is a stranger to her. She is alone because of her lack of English and her reliance on saints and signs and dreams and mysticism. Fiercely protective of her children she doesn’t recognize that her smothering is harming them rather than helping them.

Horacio grows as a nearly feral child. Clearly his parents’ violent arguments affect him and he turns to his friends and to the streets, finally escaping into the U.S. Air Force.

And baby Hector is trapped in his own skin and desperately seeking an escape. He is neither Cuban nor American. Neither a man nor a son. His father dotes on him, but he cannot return the affection of this man who is so unreliable and prone to drunken violence.

Hijuelos’s writing is vivid and passionate, with scenes that are ethereal and full of mysticism contrasted with scenes of brutal reality. People yell in anger, whoop in celebration, cry in despair and wallow in silence. ( )

A Cuban-family move to the US, but aren't able to leave their homeland behind. Mercedes, after thinking she's missed her chance to marry, meets Alejo at the cinema where she works. Mercedes settles into her life as a wife and mother, though finds it hard to reconcile herself with her family's former standing on the island. The young couple decide to move to New York, but life there isn't what they expected.

An absorbing read about an immigrant family, with all the problems that immigration comes with - missing home, fitting in, language barriers, children trying to come to terms with being caught between a country they live in and the one they are originally from. ( )