by Elmore Leonard, 1998
Gene M. was reading this book and it sounded interesting. It was a fun, action-packed romp through 1890’s Cuba. The characters were good and the good guys win! Realize how bad the Spanish were to the Cubans. The Americans fought against the Spanish and won. The blowing up of the Maine was what started the war. It was never clear who did it, I mean it was possible the Americans did it to start a war and didn’t care that most of the sailors died because they were black. The cowboy, Ben Tyler, was the hero of the book. He went to Cuba to sell horses and falls in love with the place. He steals the heart of Amelia Brown, the beautiful young mistress of Rollie Boudreaux, a rich American sugar cane plantation owner, who is cruel and unfeeling. There are imprisonments and prison escapes and kidnappings and ransom notes and good guys and bad guys and really, really good guys and really, really bad guys. It was fun. It was 405 pages long and I read 81 pages each day to get through it fast, except the last day I read 162 pages. It was a page-turner. Would love for it to be a movie. Cuba Libre is a drink of Rum and Coke and a squeeze of lime.