Amanda Hale's Book Launch - "In the Embrace of the Alligator" - fictions from Cuba

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Thursday, May 5th, 2011
7:30 PM to 9:30 PM

IN THE EMBRACE OF THE ALLIGATOR � short fictions by Amanda Hale
Published by Thistledown Press, Spring 2011. Publication date March 31st.

In the Embrace of the Alligator - A portrait of the Cuban town of Baracoa, clasped by a fist of rivers flowing from mountain to ocean. In this series of linked fictions, unified by place and a cast of overlapping characters, Karina travels the length of El Caim�n, the alligator which is Cuba, sweeping from Havana to the reptilian eye of Baracoa, where she meets Onaldo, an Afro-Cuban writer who becomes her lover. Their affair inadvertently reveals more than she could ever have imagined of the mysteries of Cuba as she learns on the streets, between the sheets, and in the kitchens of Baracoa the real story behind the smiles and the music.

Pedro Iv�n tumbles from his balcony in a moment of disbelief; Mirian Zelda guides the souls of the dead until the mysterious disappearance of Marek Svoboda; Yolanda waits for her posting to Venezuela with a mixture of longing and dread; Mario, a gay man, serves a seven year sentence for dancing with his foreign lover; Linancia falls into the necessity of life as a jinetera; Lorenzo grins as he remembers his life behind the wall in Leipzig. As the veils fall one by one Karina falls deeply in love with the true and hidden life of El Caim�n.

Amanda Hale, novelist, poet, dramatist and journalist, has been writing for over 30 years. Of her three novels, Sounding the Blood - which she has recently adapted as a screenplay - was a finalist for the BC Relit Awards and was voted one of the Top Ten novels of 2001 by Toronto's Now Magazine; and The Reddening Path - about a Guatemalan adoptee to Canada - has been translated into Spanish. Hale lives on the BC coast and travels frequently.

In the Embrace of the Alligator includes an award-winning story published in Prism International. Hale�s extensive time in Cuba over the past seven years has inspired her to write about the most elusive and fascinating culture she has yet encountered. She writes from the inside, about ordinary Cubans, attempting to untangle the knot of contradictions that is Castro�s Cuba.