Meet author Patrick Symmes

Books and Books Coral Gables July 11th, 2007. 8:00 p.m. The Colegio de Dolores was a small, select Jesuit institution located in Santiago de Cuba, capital city of Oriente, in eastern Cuba . It was a school that for decades offered the sons of Cuba’s most affluent and ambitious families an elite, rigorous education, preparing them for lives of achievement and leadership. And it was here in the 1940s, among the school’s 238 students, that one could find the three Castro brothers – Ramon, Fidel, and Raul. By unearthing the stories of The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Classmates from Revolution to Exile, Patrick Symmes has given us a unique work of investigative history. Castro’s path would dramatically alter the lives and fates of his classmates, and it is through their stories and voices that the emotional and psychological affects of dislocation and exile come vividly to life. Symmes’ remarkable work also succeeds in capturing the political and social complexities and contradictions of Cuba. No other country this size has had such a curiously powerful grip on the axis of history, and no other political leader has held our attention, and for many an undying hatred, as long and as profoundly as has Castro. For more information, please call: 305.442.4408