Viva Matilde!

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In his earlier novel, Caf Con Leche, Jack Fernandez reported, as a newspaper item, the death of Matilde Gmez, his hero and favorite character; the reader was not shown the body. Only after publication did Fernandez discover that Matilde did not die. At that point he undertook the sequel, Viva Matilde! Viva Matilde! begins with Matilde’s survival after crossing the treacherous waters of the Florida Straits. He assumes a new identity and soon finds himself enmeshed in the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Pablo and Consuelo Iglesias, the successful Cuban-American couple, continue to grapple with repressed racial issues, as Matilde, the heroic mulatto, and his beautiful wife Zoraida again find their lives intertwined with Pablo’s and Consuelo’s, this time on a loom stretching between Tampa and Washington during the tumultuous 1960s. Clothed in a false identity, Matilde must navigate his way around the calculating Pablo and the deceit and infidelity of the mystical and hysterical Zoraida. In his new life he finds another woman and discovers a relative he never knew he had. The story reaches its climax in the Washington race riot of 1968. No, our great mulatto could not have perished crossing the Florida Straits, for he still had lives to live, battles to fight, and fields to conquer.