... perceptive and keenly observant.

... DePalma vividly depicts the lives of several families in modern Cuba. DePalma’s writing is evocative and detailed, and the reader feels as though they are walking alongside the people whose aspirations and dreams he so poignantly highlights. The country comes alive with each sentence, and the end result is an homage to Cuba and the Cuban people that is both heartbreaking and hopeful..

... [a] remarkable book.

The result of [DePalma's] clear-eyed affection for this midsized communist island is a deeply reported if somewhat rambling account of Cuba’s bittersweet realities. He has a deep feeling for the place and I suspect the project was hatched before Donald Trump dashed hopes of US détente and, with that, the waves of American tourists who might have visited and found through DePalma’s book a deeper understanding of the Cubans buzzing around them.

DePalma opens up these lives, following spouses, children and colleagues, showing the determination and ingenuity with which Cubans have overcome material hardship and the rigors of their own government.

Many Americans have lived so long with the Cuban revolution and its aftermath that their impression of the Cuban people forms little but a political stereotype, quite divorced from the island nation’s present-day realities. Journalist DePalma...sets the record straight.

DePalma is light on geopolitical and ideological context.

... a sensitive portrait.

An intimate history.