In this lively memoir, told with engaging wit and emotion, Alberto Gonzalez Rivero, poor country boy, masters English, earns his university degree, and embarks on a bright teaching future. Suddenly economic disaster strikes his family and almost all Cuban families during the "Special Period" of the1990s. Alberto, now the young father of two little daughters, struggles mightily to keep food on the table. Just when things are looking especially grim, a chance encounter with Reverend Raul Suarez of the Martin Luther King Center in Havana provides him with the chance to utilize his special gift and training in languages as the interpreter for visiting delegations - and eventually as a translator for Fidel Castro himself. Each chapter begins with a brief description of Cuba during the decades after the revolution."