Sue's Bookshelf

The Charlotte Jewish News, May 2023

By Sue Littauer

“Incident at San Miguel,” by A.J. Sidransky is based on the true story of Miriam Bradman Abrahams and her family who, like so many Jewish refugees, emigrated from Poland to Cuba. The Jewish community was tightly connected there, but when the Cuban revolution occurred in December 1958, things changed and many Jewish families knew they had to leave Cuba to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Abrahams explained, “I related my story to author A.J. Sidransky, whose books I reviewed for the Jewish Book Council. As a fluent Spanish speaker with connections to the Dominican Republic and a grandson of refugees himself, I knew he could connect emotionally to my story. As a fiction writer, he could fill in the gap of so many missing years with his creative touch. He melded some of the facts of my family’s time in Cuba and the difficulty of their emigration with purely fictional events and people.

‘Incident at San Miguel’ is the story of two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of Castro’s revolution. Aaron and Moises Cohan share a name and a Jewish heritage, but little else. Aaron is a lawyer and an official in Batista’s government. Moises is a communist rebel and supporter of Castro. The rift between the two brothers runs deep and severs not only their relationship but their relationship with their beloved parents as well. Both brothers quickly learn that no one in their world can be trusted, and at the point where Aaron seeks to leave the country with his family, I was hooked on his story.

“Families seeking to immigrate to the United States would pack their suitcases for a week or so and tell their family members, employees, and friends they were going on vacation, to return within a designated peri od of time. At the airport they would be questioned, the father often taken into a separate office to be harshly interrogated. In the case of Aaron, he was presented with an impossible choice based on a false charge.

“To understand the situation more fully, I spoke with the daughter of a Cuban refugee family who immigrated to Charlotte. She said that her grandfather realized they had to leave Cuba when Castro started taking over the educational system. Like Aaron, when her parents and their three children were at the airport, her dad was suddenly taken into a private office and was interrogated by officials with machine guns – they finally said his wife and children could leave but he couldn’t. Her mother said she wasn’t leaving without her husband, and luckily an important government official and former classmate of hers at Havana University entered the airport, recognized her, and let them leave.”

As I did, those reading "Incident at San Miguel" will much about the history and culture of the Jewish community of Cuba. “Incident at San Miguel” will be published on May 19, 2023.

A.J. Sidransky is the author of “The Interpreter,” an unforgettable work of historical fiction; and the award-winning Forgiving Series, “Forgiving Maximo Rothman,” “Forgiving Mariela Camacho,” and “Forgiving Stephen Redmond.” In each of these works of historical fiction; romance, mystery, Jewish history, and culture are woven throughout.

The works of A.J. Sidransky can be found at the Levine-Sklut Judaic Library at the Center for Jewish Education.