When I recently started carp(e) libris, I had a vision. I wanted to bring books to readers, unique pieces of literature hunted like gold from small presses who publish works as labors of love. I have found one of those books. Boxing for Cuba by Guillermo Vincente Vidal is exactly the kind of book I wanted to share when I began this blog. It’s written courageously, from the heart, and in such an honest, strong style that I won’t soon forget it.

Boxing for Cuba, published by Ghost Road Press, is the memoir of a man who left Cuba as a boy with Operation Peter Pan in 1961. Operation Peter Pan carried more than 14,000 Cuban children between the ages of 6 and 16 to America to save them from Fidel’s regime. Unfortunately, with too few homes to accept all these children until their parents could hopefully someday join them, many, like Guillermo and his two brothers, ended up in orphanages. Through the pain and struggle of feeling abandoned when his parents sent him and his brothers away, to the reunion of his family only to find his mother and father fight just as viciously as before, Boxing for Cuba brings you an amazing memoir you won’t be able to put down. The journey starts and ends with Cuba, taking you from the tropical home of Vidal and his family, to the U.S. where he grew to adulthood in Colorado, and finally circles back to an emotional visit to his homeland. It’s a story of family history and of learning to be proud of who you are and where you come from. There’s so much to be gleaned from this book, and anyone who reads it is sure to put it down feeling they’ve grown from it.

If ever a book gives the perfect example of why I adore the memoir, this is it.