Last Seen in Havana by Teresa Dovalpage
What happens when you mix a starry-eyed blond, blue-eyed teenage surfer girl wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt with a strikingly handsome genuine Cuban revolutionary soldier nearly twice her age who is one of Fidel Castro’s right-hand men? Hint: this is not a romance novel despite their “meet cute”. I heartily recommend Last Seen in Havana by captivating author Teresa Dovalpage as a novel that kept me up pleading for “just one more chapter” to whispered exhortations to “please, turn out the light, it’s late.”
Dr. Dovalpage has intimate, firsthand knowledge of the unique challenges of growing up in Cuba during the dictatorial regime of “El Comandante” Fidel Castro from 1959-2008. She has written twelve novels of which five mysteries are based in Havana in addition to other works, in both English and Spanish. Last Seen in Havana is sprinkled with easily understood Spanish words and phrases lending authenticity and emphasis.
Alternating Timelines and First-Person Insight
Teresa Dovalpage uses an unusual format for relating Last Seen in Havana by alternating chapters between Sarah’s 1986-1989 story and Mercedes’s 2019 search for clues to her mother’s mysterious disappearance. The author uses third-person narration to reveal Sarah’s thoughts, point of view and actions then switching to first person for her letters.
Mercedes’ chapters are narrated solely in first person underscoring the present day and the immediacy of her actions, thoughts and interactions. It works brilliantly by contrasting the naïve love-stricken teen with the slightly older and certainly more mature young mother whose first priority is her child’s welfare.
Sarah Nelson was an 18-year-old college freshman at UC Berkeley who, on a whim, accompanied her best friend Rob to Cuba. They have been sharing secrets since age 5 when they met in kindergarten in their upscale hometown of Pacific Beach north of San Diego. This beautiful community has miles of well-tended sandy beaches and some of the finest surfing in southern California.
Tall, athletic and brainy with a passion for helping the underserved, ultra-liberal UC Berkeley was the perfect choice for Sarah. Along with Rob, she began studying the Communist Manifesto, Marxism and the Cuban Revolution as part of their political science and Spanish curricula. Sarah is no longer on speaking terms with her conservative parents whom she had already alienated by getting arrested for helping to smuggle refugees into California.
Rob, already a member of an organization called “Compañeros de Cuba”, had learned it was possible to skirt American travel prohibitions and restrictions by traveling to Havana by way of flights from Tijuana, Mexico, a mere 20 miles away from San Diego. When he suggested they take an 8-day winter break holiday in Havana to include the January 1st Triumph of the Revolution parade, fate lent a hand.
Call it serendipity or rotten luck, when Sarah caught sight of the handsome Army Lieutenant Joaquín in full dress uniform after the parade, it was love at first sight. The night before she was to return to the States she impulsively tore up her return ticket while vowing to write the horrified Rob every week. Back in the States, her frantic parents filed a “missing persons” report and even traveled to El Salvador where they believed her to be staying.
Castro’s Cuba and a Revolutionary Soldier
Joaquín dumped his steady girlfriend Berta and moved Sarah from her hotel into his house, Villa Santa Maria, a gift from Castro for his loyal service. Fidel had seized and nationalized multiple businesses owned by foreign national companies without compensation which included the lucrative casinos resulting in the enduring Cuban embargo. Castro’s Cuba continues to label this “a blockage.”
He also nationalized companies and farms belonging to native-born Cubans while requisitioning houses and estates displacing formerly wealthy citizens most of whom were Bautista supporters. Many people fled for their lives heading to Florida as swiftly as possible.
Joaquín’s trophy house was an Art Deco-style mansion with seven bedrooms, three floors filled with art and antiques and possibly the ghost of a witch that was associated with the previous owner’s family.
Sarah, renamed Tania Maria, was overwhelmed by the size and responsibility for its upkeep. Joaquín’s expectation she would remain at home and limit her contact to a handful of neighbors was an unpleasant surprise compounded by his long working hours which kept him away much of the time.
The social reforms of free education, medical care and community activities are off-set by limited food choices resulting in a diet lacking in variety. This consists of black beans and rice daily, only occasionally enlivened with the addition of fish, chicken and even more rarely, roasted pork with limited fruit and no salads. There are endless long lines for everything; no supermarkets or even large farmer’s markets; basic necessities are unavailable except by possession of the correct rationing card and then only if supplies have not run out.
Initially awed by her proximity to Fidel Castro, Sarah sometimes translates for him but rather poorly due to her limited Spanish. Cuban Spanish is rapid fire; blended words and omitted endings. She learns to get around, displeasing Joaquín when frequenting the black market yet begins to question who she can trust. Idealism begins to give way to realism under the totalitarian dictatorship.
Mystery of a Mother’s Disappearance
Mercedes Spivey recently widowed and residing in a home in Miami purchased after the death of her husband Nolan, is a baker in a bakery/restaurant popular with Cuban émigrés and their families, tourists and Floridians.
When she receives a late-night telephone call from an area code in Havana, she immediately senses it will be bad news. Catalina, her elderly paternal grandmother Mamina’s best friend, urges her to “come home”. She learns Mamina fell halfway down her long marble staircase, has a hairline fracture in one arm, is disoriented and will be spending the night at the emergency hospital.
Merceditas, as her grandmother calls her, is very much like her mother in appearance; tall, long-legged, blond and blue-eyed but darker in complexion. She was born in Havana and raised by her paternal grandmother Mamina after her mother disappeared. Not long after this, she is told her father has died fighting in Angola.
She is desperate to discover what happened to her mother who vanished thirty years ago, last glimpsed in 1989 pushing her toddler’s stroller down a dusty, sunny street in Havana. Did she simply abandon her child? Was she unloved? Why is Mamina evasive and at times pretends to be senile when questioned?
Meanwhile, the Villa Santa Maria has deteriorated into a state of advanced decrepitude. Mercedes and her friend and traveling companion Candela need to be aggressive with their sleuthing, to arrange for Mamina’s care and begin some overdue restoration to the only home she knew in Cuba.
It’s an exciting, dramatic, multi-layered plot with well-drawn characters and a great deal of information about what growing up Cuban meant in the mid-1980s.
Last Seen in Havana will make for lively discussion in book clubs and I eagerly anticipate reading more books by Teresa Dovalpage. Highly recommended.
About Teresa Dovalpage:
Teresa Dovalpage was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1966. She earned her BA in English literature and an MA in Spanish literature at the University of Havana, and her PhD in Latin American literature at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of twelve other works of fiction and three plays, and is the winner of the Rincón de la Victoria Award and a finalist for the Herralde Award.
