The Tilting House

Two estranged sisters with a complicated past and an acrimonious present reunite in 1990s Cuba to confront the riddle of family amid the scars of political upheaval

In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, is living with her strict, religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri’s sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother, and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphanages, Mariela spent the past three decades in the United States and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots, make art, and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young, glamorous, and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges, Yuri falls further into Mariela’s mercurial orbit.

Spanning two countries and three decades, The Tilting House explores identity and family loyalty, the effects of losing one’s mother and motherland, the scars of political and historical upheaval, and an immigrant’s complex quest both to return ＂home＂ and to be free from the past. Through her long journey, Yuri comes to understand that the past cannot be fully recovered, or fully escaped, even as she approaches the possibility of compassion for Mariela, for Ruth, for others, and for herself.

IVONNE LAMAZARES was born in Havana. She left Cuba at the age of thirteen and settled in Florida. Her first novel, The Sugar Island, was translated into seven languages. Publishers Weekly’s starred review called The Sugar Island ＂spare, lyrical, and brilliantly observant.＂ The Washington Post called Lamazares ＂a fine literary voice.＂ Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Latina Magazine, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. Lamazares is the recipient of an NEA and three Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. She lives in Miami and teaches writing at Miami Dade College.