Carlos and his brother are two of 14,000 other children who’ve been exiled from Cuba without their parents. Children are admitted quickly into the United States because they aren’t required to have security clearances, unlike their parents who wait months and sometimes years for welcomed entry. From the time that Eire and his brother enter the United States, three and a half years go by until they are reunited with their mother in America. Eire’s father never reaches them. The book begins with Eire’s, eight at the time, retelling how Batista fled that morning on New Years Day, with Castro now in power. After this regime change, Eire continues to live in Cuba, however, nothing is how it was, he recounts. Waiting for snow in Havana shares Eire’s memories before and after the Cuban revolution and writes briefly about his life after getting to America. For the most part, however, Eire recounts his childhood memories from Cuba, sharing memories of car-surfing, firecrackers, beautiful sunsets and lots of …show more content…
He achieves a great compilation of realist perspectives on life’s tragedies, the mystery of hope coming and going, and a grand desire to grasp the flow of life as events, tragic or not, shape the future, even though explanation for such events become almost incomprehensible and unbearable. “Is it possible to have a life without desires? I refuse to believe it.” Carlos Eire’s desire was to tell this story and relate memories from his life to a grand audience, and he does so both eloquently and