Dressing the Saints

Dressing the Saints, the second selection for the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writers Series, vividly explores the lives of Cuban Americans. Set in the lushness of Cuba and Florida, and spanning decades, the stories chronicle lives left behind and new ones forged with struggle, melancholy, and hope. Old loves are reencountered, enemies confronted, family secrets are revealed, and women fight for agency. Memory, what can't be forgotten and what is elusively fading away with the passage of time, is ever-present in the stories of people fiercely confronting fate with grace and compassion. "Dressing the Saints is a beautiful collection of short stories that captures the losses, family allegiances, and ruptures of Cuban exile. Haunted by the past, richly detailed, and with a strong sense of place, each piece is a quiet portrait of dislocation, of the need to tell stories in order to survive." -- Cristina Garcia, author of Vanishing Maps