Island of the white rose : a novel
(Book)

Intrigue and adventure, armed struggle and forbidden love intersect amid the Castro revolution in1950s Cuba. Father Pedro Villanueva, 34, the novel’s protagonist, son of an upper-middle-class Havana family, is non-political until his brother Alberto is killed by dictator Fulgencio Batista’s men. He then joins with the underground to support the Fidelistas fighting in the Sierra Maestra. Two attractive women of the underground, Dolores Barre and Maria Guerra, persuade Pedro first to obtain medicines for the rebels, later to smuggle arms to them aboard his family’s 40-foot sloop, The White Rose (named after a poem by Jose Marti, a 19th century national hero, in which the white rose symbolizes Cuba and its brightest aspirations). As Pedro’s involvement with the revolution grows, taking him into the mountains, gun in hand, his priestly ethics and his celibacy vows are sacrificed. After Batista flees the country and Castro’s forces take power, Pedro sees some close to him demonized, he comes to realize he has traded his core beliefs for disillusionment—and The White Rose, with Pedro at the helm, secretly slips off on a new mission.--publisher's website.