Yankee Comandante

Michael Sallah, co-winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, is the coauthor of Tiger Force. He has written and edited groundbreaking stories for the Miami Herald, revealing public corruption and government blunders that prompted congressional hearings, legislative reforms, and the recovery of millions in taxpayer dollars. Sallah was a 2012 Pulitzer finalist for a series that exposed deadly conditions in Florida’s assisted-living facilities for the elderly and mentally ill, which resulted in a grand jury investigation and the forced closing of some of the largest facilities in the state. He writes for the Washington Post and lives in Washington, DC.Mitch Weiss, co-winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, is the coauthor of Tiger Force, No Way Out, and Hunting Che. Over the last twenty years he has investigated stories of clerical sexual abuse, government corruption, police misconduct, and white-collar crime. His investigative series about corrupt real estate appraisers won several national awards in 2009, and he won a George Polk Award for his coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He works for the Associate Press on special projects and lives in Greenville, South Carolina.

***starred review***A nonfiction account of an unlikely American hero in revolutionary Cuba that succeeds as both a thriller and a love story. While working at the Toledo Blade, Miami Herald reporter Sallah and AP reporter Weiss. . . .met a remarkable woman living in Toledo, a Cuban émigré and former political prisoner whose story inspired another newspaper series and this book. When she was Olga Maria Rodriguez, she had fallen in love with and married a man who initially didn't even speak her language, an American named William Morgan who had found purpose in his difficult, directionless life by joining the revolutionary forces in Cuba to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. His experience in the U.S. Army had ended with him going AWOL, but his superior military skills helped him overcome the distrust of his Cuban comrades and earn the admiration of the country's citizenry, who were "hailing him as a hero of a revolution that was about the change the course of history." Yet there was tension in the revolutionary forces between Morgan's Second Front and Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, as the former remained committed to liberating the country and holding elections while the latter was consolidating power and turning the new government into a communist dictatorship. Even greater complications ensued as Morgan was recruited for a plot to assassinate Castro, turned double agent by revealing the plot to the targeted dictator while continuing to play along, and ultimately found himself stripped of his American citizenship and imprisoned by the Cuban government. His widow's memories help humanize a complicated and conflicted man whose story sheds fresh light on the pivotal period in U.S.-Cuban relations. Beyond the political implications and entanglements, the story engrosses with its fast-paced, plainspoken narrative.