The Distant Marvels

Maria Sirena tells stories. She does it for money - she was a favourite in the cigar factory where she worked as a lectora - and for love, spinning gossamer tales out of her own past for the benefit of friends, neighbours and family. But now, like a modern-day Scheherazade, she will be asked to tell one last story so that eight women can keep hope, and themselves, alive as a deadly hurricane hits Cuba. The women are trapped together, and so Maria begins to tell the story of her childhood during Cuba's Third War of Independence.