Out writer Eduardo Santiago’s acclaimed novel Tomorrow They Will Kiss chronicles the upheaved lives of three Cuban exiles.

By John Hobbs

In 2003, Eduardo Santiago, an admitted voracious reader, was strolling through West Hollywood Park like thousands of others, taking in the myriad literary offerings of the annual West Hollywood Book Fair when, seemingly out of nowhere, inspiration struck the then-bookstore clerk.

"I met Corey Roskin [author coordinator for the festival] and I said to him, 'Next year I am going to be here with a published book.' I don't even know where it came from. [Roskin] just smiled and said, 'Well that would be cool,'" reflects Santiago, who had committed nary a word of fiction to paper when making such a lofty assertion.

Three years later, Santiago is returning to the West Hollywood Book Fair a man of his word. Not only will the novelist be toting along his first foray into fiction—Tomorrow They Will Kiss—he'll also be busy serving as an active participant on two different panels scheduled during the day and signing copies well into the afternoon at Skylight Books.

"I feel that enormous progress has been made and that was born right there at the West Hollywood Book Fair," beams Santiago. "I am very grateful and so excited to be a part of it this year."

The Cuban-born novelist, who fled the island nation at 10 when Fidel Castro’s regime threw a gray cloak of communism over the otherwise colorful island, admits to being tortured by the indelible images of his motherland seared into his youthful mind. “I wondered, ‘Why do I think about Cuba so much? Why is it so alive in my consciousness?’ And then finally I realized maybe I am the one who is supposed to record this history,” says Santiago.

Drawing from his experiences, Santiago penned Tomorrow They Will Kiss from the perspective of three women, who joined countless other exiles, leaving behind all they knew for political freedom in the United States. By day, the women work in a doll factory in New Jersey. By night, they are able to escape their political exile by watching the telenovelas that seemingly transport them back to the land they love.

"I was really concerned with the emotional baggage they brought from the other country because a lot of them were in their late 20s or early 30s when they got here. So I decided to write a story about the women and how their circle had shrunk and the kind of bonds that they had with each other," explains Santiago. "I didn't want to do a pondering, heavy-duty history lesson because I am not a historian, so I wrote something that is funny in parts, sad in parts, and hopefully moving all around."

Though recently it seemed as though Castro’s 50-year reign may have been coming to an end as the ailing dictator temporarily handed power over to his brother Raúl, Santiago grimly confides that he believes Fidel will make a triumphant return. "I'd say in six months Fidel Castro is going to stand at a balcony, address hundreds of thousands of people, and he's going to say, 'You thought you had me licked, but I am still here and things will continue,'" says Santiago.

Still, the optimistic novelist holds on to the hope that one day his homeland will be liberated from Castro’s grasp. "I have this vision of myself, older and living in Havana in a little apartment overlooking the sea. I’ll have a bookcase [with] a lot of my books on it. I will continue to write but, at that point, I will be writing from the other side of the spectrum—rather than living in America and writing about Cuba, perhaps I'll be living in Cuba writing about America."

It wouldn’t be the first time an obscure vision has become a reality for Santiago.

Catch Eduardo Santiago at the West Hollywood Book Fair taking place Sept. 17 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at West Hollywood Park. Santiago will be reading from his book at the Robertson Salon at 11 a.m., discussing the situation in Cuba at the People, Place, and Politics Pavilion at 12:15 p.m., and signing copies of his book at Skylight Books afterward.