Beautiful Maria of My Soul

In Beautiful María of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to the passionate tale he began twenty years ago in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

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 Mambo Kings story unfolds. We meet her as the illiterate peasant girl with unspeakable, head-turning beauty, who then meets Nestor in Havana, and ultimately stays with her moneyed lover instead of him. But when the Cuban revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter find themselves in Miami and in community with other Cuban women. And as she begins to take lessons at the community college, Maria 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.