Rebecca Barrios, a well-off Miami Beach housewife (and she hates that description, by the way), has decided to revive the old Cuban tradition of the tertulia, or women's get-together. In fact, the two worlds -- the real and the fictional, the American and the Cuban, the living present and the (supposedly) long-dead past -- have begun to relentlessly intertwine in unsettling ways. Born in Havana, Beatriz Rivera came to Miami at the age of three, soon after Castro's rise to power in Cuba. Her books include AFRICAN PASSIONS AND OTHER STORIES and the novel MIDNIGHT SANDWICHES AT THE MARIPOSA EXPRESS, both of which are also available from SPD.