The Tilting House (1979)

About this item

Two estranged sisters with a complicated past and an acrimonious present reunite in 1990s Cuba to confront the riddle of family amid the scars of political upheaval In the summer of 1993, Yuri, a teenage orphan, is living with her strict, religious aunt Ruth in a Havana suburb when Mariela, a thirty-four-year-old artist, arrives from the United States with a shocking revelation. She claims to be Yuri's sister, insisting that she and Yuri share a mother, and that Ruth essentially kidnapped her when she sent her into exile against her will through Operation Pedro Pan. Forced to grow up in orphanages, Mariela spent the past three decades in the United States and has returned to Cuba to reclaim her roots, make art, and perhaps seek vengeance on Ruth. Yuri is both fascinated and repulsed by the young, glamorous, and aggrieved Mariela. When Ruth is jailed for unknown charges, Yuri falls further into Mariela’s mercurial orbit. Spanning two countries and three decades