1895 A Novel of Love and War

CUBA 1895- David meets Goliath in the War for Cuba’s independence! Spain’s centuries’ old empire is agonizing.  Cuba is in flames. A young and increasingly powerful America is ready to help the Cubans gain freedom.

Two young lovers, Paco and Maria Teresa, are caught in the devastation. Our heroes, a young Havana freedom fighter and a beautiful farm girl who escapes a concentration camp, fight and love their way to survival.  The island is ablaze, cane fields are burning, and thousands of civilians are dying in the island’s concentration camps. Then, horror strikes when the Maine battleship explodes in mysterious circumstances in Havana harbor, and innocent American sailors die in the shark-infested waters.

Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers drive America’s public opinion to war, and force a reluctant President Mc Kinley to intervene on the side of the Cubans.  Behind the scenes, a hawkish Teddy Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the Navy has succeeded in his efforts to modernize the US navy believing in America’s manifest destiny, and in anticipation of such an opportunity. Roosevelt has sent the Pacific fleet under Dewey to naval fleet to the Philippines.

On April 25, 1898 the U.S. declares war on Spain. In Cuba, Roosevelt and his Rough Riders tilt the balance in the critical battle of Santiago and San Juan Hill. Our hero will fight along side a battle crazed Roosevelt, and survive. He will dine in a devastated Santiago with Colonel Leonard Wood, future governor of Cuba, and a young American correspondent Stephen Crane, in the home of Emilio Bacardi, the head of the Bacardi rum factory.

The story will take you into a Cuba that Americans have never imagined, and most do not understand. It will presage the development of US- Cuban relationships into the 20th century. The novel will be the author’s first of a century spanning trilogy. The story will continue with subsequent generations of the protagonists and their descendants. 

The Cuban American writer, Jorge I. Casariego, drives this fascinating epic relentlessly to its dramatic conclusion at a pace comparable to R. L. Doctorow’s ‘The March’ and a zeitgeist reminiscent of Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind.’

You’ll encounter historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt, the influential Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the writer Stephen Crane. You’ll be thrilled by the brave exploits of Andrew S. Rowan who carries a critical message to General Garcia from President Mc Kinley and is congratulated but the president in the White House.

 You’ll ride to battle with the motley Rough Riders and the American forces under General William Shafter. You’ll meet Don Tomas Estrada Palma, Cuba’s first president who was a former teacher in an upstate New York Quaker school.  The characters, fictional and historical, will weave themselves into a fascinating plot. You’ll meet Cuban leaders like Jose Marti, Cuban Generals Calixto Garcia, Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez, as well as  Spanish, like the cruel Captain General Valeriano ‘the Butcher’ Weyler and the conciliatory Martinez Campos. These real figures will be seen in a new light as they join our fictional heroes in making the pages of this come alive in a manner never seen by readers.

Casariego has drawn from original sources; family records and extensive historical research to bring to life his epic novel-1895 A Novel of Love and War.

We hope that you enjoy it.