My Review of Waiting for Snow in Havana on Goodreads

5 Starts out of

The author was one of the children who left Cuba on the Peter Pan flights in 1962, without his parents. The book relates his life in Cuba, and in orphanages and foster homes in the U.S. The story is common, but the perspective is fresh and compelling.

The book is sometimes funny, sometimes sad. There are even a few items covered that I found a bit uninteresting. But the description of wealth and comfort lost, of fear of the unknown, of coping with a new life, with no prior preparation, is very informative. The author speaks of the time when the Revolutionary government took over and everything changed as the time when “The World Changed.”

He explains certain events, such as the exodus of Batista, Castro and his cronies coming in, the murder of believers of both governments, the loss of Christmas in late 1958, when the rebels were coming out of the hills to take over, and the subsequent events.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is a moving, true-to-life account of a child’s loss of everything, and survival in a new world.