47 pages • 1 hour read
Chanel CleetonWhen We Left Cuba
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
On November 26, 2016, a woman in Palm Beach receives a delivery of a bottle of champagne. She pours a glass and thinks, “It is the taste of victory and defeat, of love and loss, of nights of revelry and decadence in Havana and days of exile in Palm Beach” (2).
Chapter 1 Summary
Beatriz tries to remember the name of the man kneeling before her, offering her fifth proposal of marriage. She declines the proposal, though the marriage would elevate her family. It’s been a year since her family left Cuba, where her father ran a prosperous sugar business. She feels they are regarded with veiled contempt by their American neighbors.
Beatriz steps out onto the terrace to listen to the ocean and pretends she is in Cuba. She spots a handsome man, “the sort of man who has never had to wonder if he’ll have a roof over his head, or fear his father dying in a cage with eight other men, or flee the only life he has ever known” (7). She thinks of him as Golden Boy. He says he heard she ruled as a queen of the social scene in Havana. Beatriz speaks bitterly of Castro, wishing he could be replaced with someone who will bring true democracy and freedom to Cuba. She acknowledges the destruction that sugar barons like her father did to the island.
To shock Golden Boy, Beatriz admits that she once kissed Che Guevara to get her father out of the prison of La Cabaña. They dance, and Beatriz feels attraction. He leaves, and Beatriz re-enters the ballroom to see his engagement being announced to another woman. He is Nicholas Randolph Preston III of the powerful Preston family, a sitting US senator who wants to be president someday. Then she sees Dwyer, her CIA contact, the man who will help her avenge her twin brother Alejandro’s death and kill Fidel Castro.
Chapter 2 Summary
Beatriz feels the mantle of revolutionary passed to her with her brother’s death: “His anger became my anger, his dreams my dreams, his hope my hope, his death my death” (21). Alejandro was involved with the students at the University of Havana who protested Batista’s rule, and he was involved in the attack on the Presidential Palace, which led to their father disowning him. Beatriz understands the role that American interference has played in Cuban economic and political history, and she senses unease in the US over having a communist country so close to its borders. She persuades Dwyer to use her to get close to Castro. Nicholas warns her to be careful of Dwyer, and Beatriz replies that she can take care of herself.
Chapter 3 Summary
Beatriz tells Alejandro’s friend, Eduardo Diaz, about meeting Dwyer. Eduardo teases her about catching the eye of Nicholas Preston. Eduardo takes her to another party, where again Nicholas asks Beatriz to dance. She warns him that people will gossip. He speaks of his experience as a pilot in the war, while Beatriz is haunted by the memory of firing squads and of finding her brother’s body. She feels Nick has discovered one of her secrets, “the pain beneath the diamond smile” (36). If she had a heart to lose, Nicholas Preston might break it.
Chapter 4 Summary
In February, Eduardo appears with orchids and drives Beatriz to a restaurant in Jupiter to meet with Dwyer. She is happy to get away from Palm Beach, high society, and her mother’s relentless attempts to marry her off. Beatriz reflects how many of the revolutionaries hoped Fidel would defeat Batista, and then they could get rid of Fidel and bring about the change they wanted, democracy and freedom. Instead, they have another yoke.
Dwyer admits that American businesses have been hurt by Castro’s agrarian reforms, which nationalized the sugar industry and deprived families like the Perezes of their land. Beatriz says if she helps him, she wants $100,000 and her family’s property in Cuba restored. As Eduardo drives her home, he warns her again not to trust Dwyer. They speak of going back to Havana and dancing at the Tropicana. Beatriz admits that each day, Cuba feels more distant. Eduardo reminds Beatriz that she is pragmatic and a survivor, like him.
Chapter 5 Summary
February in Palm Beach means the high-society Heart Ball. Beatriz wears a red dress and is excited when she sees Nick. She feels drawn to him despite everything. As they dance, Beatriz describes Cuba as home. After the dance ends, she tells herself to forget Nick.
Chapter 6 Summary
Beatriz wakes from sleep to a sound at her window, and for a moment she is taken back to her days sneaking around in revolutionary activities with Alejandro and Eduardo. Eduardo wants her to accompany him to pick up a shipment. He admits the CIA doesn’t know about all his plans; he’s working for his own interests. He brings Beatriz as his cover as he drives to a marina. Beatriz investigates and sees that he is picking up a shipment of dynamite. He won’t tell her where it is going or what it is for.
When Beatriz returns home, her father is leaving for work. She thinks of how he has had to start over because of Fidel. He warns her not to bring more trouble on the family.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
These initial chapters establish relationships and character motivations, setting the stage for the conflict to come and introducing the theme of Exile and the Longing for Home. Beatriz feels stagnant in exile, as if the family has simply attempted to replicate their life in Cuba on another island; Palm Beach, Florida, is located on a barrier island off the southeastern tip of Florida, connected to West Palm Beach on the mainland by bridges. Beatriz finds this a poor substitution, a shadow of what they lost. Instead of trying to build a life in Florida, she is focused on Cuba as a mythical place to which she longs to return. Beatriz feels that Cuba is still her home and thinks of the country in terms of its artistic luxuries, architectural beauties, and natural setting, though she also admits to the impact that the cultivation of sugar—which supported her family—had on the island. Her wish to remove Castro, and her salary demand to Dwyer, are meant to enable her return to the Cuba of her imagination.
Another of Beatriz’s conflicts is her desire for Freedom From Gendered Expectations, particularly the belief that her future should include matrimony and motherhood. Since Elisa is already married, a relationship established in Next Year in Havana, Mrs. Perez focuses her ambitions on finding suitable husbands for Beatriz and Isobel. Beatriz is a woman behind a mask in these chapters. She pretends to be a society girl, going to parties and social events, but she is still a fighter at heart, impacted by her brother’s cause and his violent death.
The Prologue sets up suspense for the chapters to follow. Presumably the woman described in third person is Beatriz, since she is the first-person narrator in the rest of the book, but it is unclear who has sent her champagne, and what exactly she is celebrating.
The first chapter outlines the choice Beatriz will have to make between her Conflicted Loyalties. She falls for Nicholas Preston, who exemplifies the America she has found refuge in and the ties in America that her wealth affords her. He is attractive, rich, powerful, solid, but he has a past. He is also unattainable, newly engaged to a debutante whose family matches his own in wealth and power. But Beatriz has a goal quite opposite of relationship and marriage: she is driven by revenge to become involved with CIA plans to remove Castro from power.
Beatriz feels not quite formed, somewhere between a girl and a woman. Her nebulous sense of place or sense of a future continues the upheaval of leaving Cuba and to some extent mirrors the changes taking place in that country. Beatriz, especially through her connections to Eduardo, feels more attached to and invested in what is happening in Cuba, whereas the rest of her family appears to be adapting to life in Palm Beach. The hint that Beatriz was involved in her brother’s revolutionary activities reinforces her attachment to him and explains how she would agree to become involved in an assassination attempt.
Beatriz is also warned not to trust anyone around her, which leaves her feeling alone and that she can only rely on herself. The dynamite exchange with Eduardo adds tension and gravity to her activities. The episode shows Beatriz’s skills at detection and handling herself in a risky situation, but the dynamite is also a metaphor for the unstable relationship between the two countries.
