This endlessly engaging novel recounts the personal and political fortunes and misfortunes of Dr. Leal, a prestigious Cuban-American surgeon, who comes home to the Miami of his childhood to attend his brother's funeral. From the moment he enters the Miami airport, Dr. Leal is caught up in the complicated and suffocating realities of current U.S.-Cuban relationships, the personal politics of the exile community in Miami, his aging mother's startling revelations about the Leal family, and a mysterious young Colombian woman named Milena.