One Brilliant Flame
| Availability: | On backorder |
Join us for our first Virtual Author Series event of the year when Joy Castro will discuss One Brilliant Flame on February 13, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. CT. The event is free to attend with online registration.
A nineteenth-century utopia becomes a powder keg of political intrigue and betrayal in an enthralling historical novel―inspired by actual events―by the author of Flight Risk.
Key West, 1886. The booming cigar industry makes it the most prosperous city in Florida. As a rebel base for the anti-colonial insurgency in Cuba, it’s also a tinderbox for six young friends with ambitious dreams.
They all brim with secrets: Zenaida, the daughter of an assassinated Havana journalist; power-hungry Sofia, who plots a fast track to success; Chaveta, Zenaida’s loyal comrade in arms who fearlessly flouts tradition; Feliciano, a charismatic Spanish anarchist; Líbano, the cafetero, silent and watchful; and Maceo, a daring guerrilla soldier who fights a brutal undertow. As lives intertwine, revolution smolders, and passions ignite, the bustling coral island is set to explode.
Against the backdrop of the Great Fire of Key West, One Brilliant Flame explores the luminous fates of consuming passion and encroaching peril in the face of insurrection, sacrifice, and inextinguishable hope.
Lake Union Publishing: January 3, 2023 | Paperback: 352 pages
—Scroll down for information about the author and editorial reviews—
About the Author
Born in Miami, raised in England and West Virginia, and educated in Texas, Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the memoir The Truth Book, two literary thrillers set in post-Katrina New Orleans: Hell or High Water and Nearer Home, the essay collection Island of Bones, and the short fiction collection How Winter Began. Her work has appeared in venues including Ploughshares, Senses of Cinema, Brevity, Fourth Genre, North American Review, Salon, Afro-Hispanic Review, Gulf Coast, and the New York Times Magazine. Winner of the Nebraska Book Award and an International Latino Book Award, Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award, an alternate for the Berlin Prize, editor of the anthology Family Trouble, and a former Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University, she’s the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and Latinx studies.
Editorial Reviews
“This is a fascinating, informative, and important read.” ―Booklist
“Suspenseful and steeped in history, Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame transports readers to a vibrant nineteenth-century Key West, one stoked by revolution in Cuba and inflamed by the passions of striking young characters. Castro’s novel beautifully illuminates a largely forgotten history in a memorable and compelling light. I learned so much, but more importantly, I couldn’t put it down.” ―Chantel Acevedo, author of The Distant Marvels
“An absorbing and fascinating look at a forgotten part of Key West (and US) history. Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame introduces us to three young women whose ties to each other and to the Cuban fight for independence are as complicated as their personalities. One Brilliant Flame proves that the political is also the personal.” ―Ana Veciana-Suarez, author of The Chin Kiss King
“As the old Spanish Empire falls and the new North American one rises, a tiny island in Florida becomes the key to understanding a world without empires. This historical novel is conjured by the ghosts of lectors in tobacco factories, visionary preachers of anarchy and love who understood that partial freedom is no freedom at all. With her signature elegance, Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame illuminates a forgotten and fundamental chapter of US history, while it also indulges in the revolutionary fervor of burning it all.” ―Luis Othoniel Rosa, author of Beginnings for an Anarchist Aesthetics: Borges with Macedonio
“Stunning historical fiction that puts women front and center―at last!―in the late-nineteenth-century world of Cubans seeking freedom for their island from the other side of the sea. Beautiful and illuminating!” ―Ruth Behar, Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan, and author of Letters from Cuba
“A stunning work of the imagination―a brilliant evocation of the way war, exile, and freedom defined the Cuban nation from the start and how the wounds of the early republic haunt us still. In animating a lost world, Joy Castro beautifully traces the future that might have risen from its ashes. A spectacular achievement that continues to resonate beyond the book’s close.” ―Ana Menéndez, author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
“Suspenseful and steeped in history, Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame transports readers to a vibrant nineteenth-century Key West, one stoked by revolution in Cuba and inflamed by the passions of striking young characters. Castro’s novel beautifully illuminates a largely forgotten history in a memorable and compelling light. I learned so much, but more importantly, I couldn’t put it down.” ―Chantel Acevedo, author of The Distant Marvels
“An absorbing and fascinating look at a forgotten part of Key West (and US) history. Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame introduces us to three young women whose ties to each other and to the Cuban fight for independence are as complicated as their personalities. One Brilliant Flame proves that the political is also the personal.” ―Ana Veciana-Suarez, author of The Chin Kiss King
“As the old Spanish Empire falls and the new North American one rises, a tiny island in Florida becomes the key to understanding a world without empires. This historical novel is conjured by the ghosts of lectors in tobacco factories, visionary preachers of anarchy and love who understood that partial freedom is no freedom at all. With her signature elegance, Joy Castro’s One Brilliant Flame illuminates a forgotten and fundamental chapter of US history, while it also indulges in the revolutionary fervor of burning it all.” ―Luis Othoniel Rosa, author of Beginnings for an Anarchist Aesthetics: Borges with Macedonio
“Stunning historical fiction that puts women front and center―at last!―in the late-nineteenth-century world of Cubans seeking freedom for their island from the other side of the sea. Beautiful and illuminating!” ―Ruth Behar, Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan, and author of Letters from Cuba
“A stunning work of the imagination―a brilliant evocation of the way war, exile, and freedom defined the Cuban nation from the start and how the wounds of the early republic haunt us still. In animating a lost world, Joy Castro beautifully traces the future that might have risen from its ashes. A spectacular achievement that continues to resonate beyond the book’s close.” ―Ana Menéndez, author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
Related products
The Antidote
$30.00
Sabrina & Corina: Stories
$17.00
Woman of Light: A Novel
$18.00
Bohemian Girl
$16.95
