Beautiful Maria of My Soul - by Oscar Hijuelos (Paperback)

About the Book

"In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Marâia is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, 'Beautiful Marâia of My Soul.' Now in her sixties, Marâia Garcâia y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. We now see the Mambo Kings' story through Marâia's eyes--and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover. When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Marâia and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Marâia finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story."--

Book Synopsis

In this mesmerizing sequel to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the "heart-stealing heroine" (Amy Tan) and muse of Cuban musician Nestor Castillo takes readers on the journey of a lifetime with this story of reinvention, romance, and revolution.

In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, 'Beautiful María of My Soul.'" Now in her sixties, María García y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor.

We now see the Mambo Kings' story through Maria's eyes--and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover.

When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Maria finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story.

Beautiful María of My Soul is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Review Quotes

" A Cuba-set tale of sex, beauty, and dancing, the vibrant sequel to The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love will guarantee you're Havana good time this summer."--Entertainment Weekly

"[A] warm, exuberant triumph . . . Savor the mysterious power of a master's pentimento."--Los Angeles Times

"A musically infused tale reflecting the boleros' themes of love and longing."--AARP

"An affecting portrait of broken dreams and regret, hope and despair, rediscovery and renewal, Beautiful María ties up the loose ends of a love story that died with Nestor in The Mambo Kings, but is still very much alive in the heart and soul of his song, 'Beautiful María.'"--Bookpage

"I fell instantly in love with the glorious soul of Beautiful Maria of my Soul. Hijuelos has created and brought to life two beloved characters, a heart-stealing heroine and Havana during an epoch of changing life."--Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife

"Ultimately, these final encounters achieve a complex intimacy that has been decades in coming, born of palpable yearning, as is apt in a book that is, after all, named for a song of love."--Chattanooga Free Press

"Beautiful Maria is the Queen of the Mambo Kings! Oscar Hijuelos brings this magnificent character to life in this lyrical novel."--Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life

"An intelligent and playful ending caps off a vivid story that should delight readers of The Mambo Kings and enthrall those new to Hijuelos's imaginative and florid voice."--Publishers Weekly

"It takes a lot of nerve and skill to pull off something as rich as Beautiful Maria of my Soul, but pull it off as Hijuelos does."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Vividly evokes the vibrant lost world of prerevolutionary Havana, the Cuban Revolution, and modern-day Miami . . . a welcome expansion on the much-loved The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, as well as a finely written novel in its own right."--Bookmarks magazine

About the Author

Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013), a native New Yorker and the son of Cuban immigrants, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of nine novels and a memoir and a recipient of the Rome Prize awarded by The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He became the first Latino winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990 for his international bestseller The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.

Lori Carlson-Hijuelos is an author and educator from Jamestown, New York. She studied Spanish literature and linguistics at the College of Wooster and got her MA in Hispanic literature from Indiana University. Lori has taught at different universities, like Duke, and she's the editor of amazing books for kids and teens, such as Cool Salsa, American Eyes, Voices in First Person, and Burnt Sugar Caña Quemada. She lives in the bustling city of New York.