The Guava Tree

The novel begins in 1967 Cuba when soldiers arrive to the home of Ines Diaz, a Lebanese immigrant, with the announcement that it’s time for her family to leave the island where she’d lived since she was six years old. When packing her family’s possessions into a single fabric curtain, she finds a box filled with childhood keepsakes that open a floodgate of memories, which comprise the heart of the novel. Ines must learn from her past experiences in order to come to terms with leaving both her home and parents behind for an unknown life that awaits her in America. She experiences racism and the death of friends and loved ones, love and success, and the overwhelming fear that comes from seeing everything she knows change before her eyes.