THE LOST APPLE: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the U.S., and the Promise of a Better Future
Maria de los Angeles Torres, . . Beacon, $29 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-0232-2
In the early 1960s—40 years before Elian Gonzalez was found tied to an inner tube off the Florida coast—more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children arrived in the United States through a clandestine airlift program known as Operation Pedro Pan. Unable to get their own visa waivers, many Cuban parents chose to send their children abroad (with the help of U.S. church and government groups) rather than subject them to the uncertainty of Fidel Castro's new Communist state. Torres was one of those children. In this blandly written book, she weaves her own experiences as a six-year-old waiting for a family friend to fetch her in the Miami airport with historical facts and interviews with the program's leaders, from the Miami priest who placed the children in temporary homes to the underground anti-Castro activists who helped facilitate matters on the island. The author of
Reviewed on: 05/26/2003
Genre: Nonfiction