Beautiful Maria of My Soul: Or the True Story of Maria Garcia Y Cifuentes, the Lady Behind a Famous Song - Softcover

"Savor the mysterious power of a master's pentimento." --Los Angeles Times

"It takes a lot of nerve and skill to pull off something as rich as Beautiful MarÍa of My Soul, but pull it off Hijuelos does." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

"I fell instantly in love with the glorious soul of Beautiful María of My Soul. Hijuelos has created and brought to life two beloved characters, a heart-stealing heroine and Havana during an epoch of changing fate." --Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club

In Beautiful María of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to the passionate tale he began twenty years ago in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, "Beautiful María of My Soul.'" Now in her sixties and living as an exile in Miami, María remains a beauty, still capable of turning heads. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. As she thinks back to her days--and nights--in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the Mambo Kings story unfolds. Beautiful María of My Soul is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer.

Oscar Hijuelos, the son of Cuban immigrants, was in New York City in 1951. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His novels--Mambo Kings, Our House in the Last World, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Empress of the Splendid Season, and A Simple Habana Melody--have been translated into twenty-five languages.