Now Then

News anchor Radford debuts with a dramatic novel of a journalist reckoning with her mother’s traumatic past in revolutionary Cuba. In 1991, Lily Walker begins her first semester at Harvard, where she’s proud of her Black Cuban heritage but knows she’ll have to work twice as hard for her achievements. She tentatively begins a relationship with a classmate named Vikram, despite his family’s expectations that he marry an Indian woman, but eventually breaks it off. After college, she publishes an op-ed in a small California newspaper about the racist response to the O.J. Simpson verdict, which gains attention after it’s syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and lands her a job at NPR in New York City. Meanwhile, Lily’s mother Marisol, hoping to strengthen their bond, writes Lily letters about her past in Cuba. She includes details she’d never been able to talk about with Lily, such as falling in love with revolutionary José Antonio Echeverría, who convinced her to join the revolution in 1956 while she was an intern at a radio station. After José was killed along with the rest of their group, Marisol was captured and raped for months. In straightforward prose, Radford lays out the parallels between Lily and Marisol, showing how their lives were impacted by love and a desire for a better future. It’s an affecting family drama. Agent: Johanna V. Castillo, Writers House. (May)