Candela's Secrets and Other Havana Stories - Paperback

by Betty Viamontes (Author)

Havana keeps secrets. Some are whispered behind closed doors; others remain buried for years, waiting for the moment when they can finally come to light.

In The Secrets of Candela and Other Stories of Havana, award-winning author Betty Viamontes brings together stories of love and betrayal, loss and hope, hunger and survival, spanning different eras in a city transformed by the Revolution-and by the lives of those who remained behind.

Through these pages move unforgettable characters: a woman whose beauty and ambition conceal secrets capable of destroying a family; young people willing to risk their lives at sea in search of freedom; an elderly woman who trades the roses from her garden for a little chicken to feed her family; and a widow who waits for hours beneath the scorching sun for a simple pizza, until the weight of everything she has lost finally catches up with her.

Through their stories, Viamontes takes us inside the homes, streets, and neighborhoods of Havana, where scarcity exists alongside generosity, sorrow alongside humor, and despair alongside the stubborn determination to keep going. Here, too, are the small things that survive history's great upheavals: a shared meal, a memory, a song, a love, a friendship, or the dream of a different life.

More than a collection of stories, The Secrets of Candela and Other Stories of Havana is an intimate portrait of a city and of generations of Cubans shaped by history, but never defined solely by it.

A tribute to the human spirit in the face of adversity, this collection captures the soul of Havana-its beauty, its sorrow, its contradictions, and its unbreakable will to survive.

"Betty Viamontes's stories are like Noah's Ark, gathering every 'specimen' to preserve for posterity the portrait of a people cast toward an uncertain destiny."

-Margarita Polo

Author Biography

Betty Viamontes, author of the highly rated autobiographical novel Waiting on Zapote Street, was born in Havana, Cuba. Her work is known for its honesty and its ability to keep readers engaged from the moment they start to read. Betty, her siblings, and her mother migrated to the United States from Cuba in 1980, when Betty was fifteen years old. They left Havana on a shrimp boat on a stormy night, when many men, women, and children lost their lives, traveling on overloaded vessels similar to theirs. Upon her arrival to the United States, Betty had to master the English language and become acclimated to a new culture. Betty completed graduate studies in Business and Accounting, as well as a Graduate Certificate Creative Writing, at the University of South Florida, and moved on to a successful career in Accounting. Her creative works have appeared on various literary journals and newspapers. In 2015, as a tribute to her mother, who passed away in 2011, and to fulfill her last wishes, Betty Viamontes published a memoir-style novel, based on her family's life in Cuba, entitled Waiting on Zapote Street. This novel was selected by a United Nations book club for its February 2016 reading and received excellent reviews. Betty enjoys giving back to her community. She is a regular speaker at the University of South Florida and other professional organizations, and is active at the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants, where she is currently the Chair of the FICPA Healthcare Conference. She derives her passion from her mother who was a teacher for many years and instilled in her the importance of an education, perseverance, and hard work.