Isabel Fernandez Quotes

“And there were so many boats. Isabel’s family had worked in secret all night with the Castillos, worried someone might hear them, but apparently, everybody else had been doing the same thing. There were inflatable rafts, Canoes with homemade outriggers. Rafts made of inner tubes tied together.”

″‘Thank you! Thank you!’ Isabel cried. Her heart ached with gratitude toward these people. Just a moment’s kindness from each of them might mean the difference between death and survival for her mother and everyone else on the little raft.”

“Isabel listened as everyone listed more and more things they were looking forward to in the States. Clothes, food, sports, movies, travel, school, opportunity. It all sounded so wonderful, but when it came down to it, all Isabel really wanted was a place where she and her family could be together, and happy.”

“She had never been able to count clave, but she had always assumed it would come to her eventually. That the rhythm of her homeland would one day whisper its secrets to her soul. But would she ever hear it now? Like trading her trumpet, had she swapped the one thing that was really hers—her music—for the chance to keep her family together?”

“She was finally counting clave. Lito was wrong. She didn’t have to be in Havana to hear it. To feel it. She had brought Cuba with her to Miami.”