Author of Destiny

(Also Known as The Ochoa Case)

Lee Williams

     Considering its serious thesis–that history is as effervescent as any fiction–Lee Williams’ novel offers a bitingly funny snippet of Cuban American life in Miami. Just scan the novel’s cast of characters: Lean, a post Cold War spy working for a newspaper; Viviana, a Russo-Cuban waiflet looking to spring her Russian general dad from prison; her brother Boris, bouncer at the Yalta Agreement, a strip joint; Dell, an academic rogue who specializes in ghost-writing anything from a term paper to a dissertation; Zorn, a sculptor hopelessly in love with the Guapa, a young woman he met years before in Spain; and Rool, a . . . well, you’ll just need to decide who Rool and Number One might be on your own. Oh, and the grand Cubano General Ochoa himself–he’s dead . . . isn’t he? . . .

ISBN 0-942979-98-2 trade paper, $14.95

ISBN 0-942979-99-0 library binding, $26.00

     I can tell You this tale in any number of ways, and maybe I will, and it won’t make a bit of difference because every time the general finishes up jitterbugging with a pole in a field at daybreak. That’s the way it’s gotta end. My only aim here, and this I swear on the graves of Che and Martí, is to set the record straight insofar as the warrior is concerned, to undertake his rehabilitation as we enter the twilight years of a 50-year reign.
    As You can imagine, recounting a life is dodgy work, but there’s probably no more unscrupulous way to do it than to lay out events and stamp them Greenwich mean time. However, if Cronus is Your god, if You believe life is a stack of torn-off calendar pages, this account may not be for You.… Wait … wait! I’m watching the video for the umpteenth occasion, and my favorite part is coming up on screen.
    Look! He’s shaking their hands. Could there be anything more gallant, more laden with pathos? Head erect. A tremendous military bearing in spite of that absurd flannel shirt my brother’s made him wear. He’s absolving those uniformed young men in advance. The tape’s not doctored, in case You’re wondering. I’ll let you continue to watch as I get back to the keyboard.
    The story I have begun to tell is ostensibly about a man named Ochoa, a fallen general, a one-time ‘Hero of the Revolution,’ and of the events which bring him to his particular nadir. But I hope You will agree, even before You reach the half-way point of this anti-chronicle, that it goes beyond being a simple biography.
    It is, foremost, the story of a people, of a collective soul, and of how false icons must inevitably be brought down. Hold tight! There it is, four pops in unison, a shudder, and the head sags to the side. The ultimate perforation. It moves me every time.

Home