Outcast Hardback - 2001

Elliot Steil, the son of a Cuban mother and an American-born laborer living on the island before the revolution, is a down-on-his-luck schoolteacher in Havana. Like so many of his fellow Havanans, he has come to accept his rather dull life and for the most part has given up hoping for a better future. But unexpectedly he is offered the opportunity to escape when a man appears on the island, claiming to be an old friend of Elliot's deceased father. The man offers to take Elliot to the United States, but it isn't long before he reveals his ulterior motives and Elliot is left to die in the dangerous waters of the Florida Straits. It is there that Elliot begins to relive the events of his life that have haunted him since his childhood. He is miraculously rescued by a family onboard a makeshift raft and soon after arriving in Miami begins his search for the man who betrayed him. As the search immerses him deeper and deeper into Miami's darker side of crime and corruption, he slowly unravels the mystery of his bicultural past and its links to the man who knew his father many decades earlier.

"Outcast is at once a brilliantly atmospheric and stunningly written literary achievement and the dazzling American debut of one of Latin America's most accomplished crime writers.