It took an Army

There are no book stores in Cuba. Unless you want a book celebrating Fidel or Che, you’re not going to find anything. Even so, my mission when I landed was to find the book, Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway wrote while living in Cuba. And I wanted the first and only edition published in Cuba. I put out the feelers when we landed and on the last day hit the lottery. A young Cuban met me at the hotel and produced a handful of Hemingway books, one of which was exactly what I was looking for. It was a literal drug transaction. The best souvenir to date.