Imagine this:

Your husband, a young psychiatrist, is imprisoned by Fidel Castro as a resistance leader. Your three children -- all under 3 -- hold the promise of freedom in the United States.

What do you do? Abandon your husband on the island and raise your kids in Miami? Or stay in Cuba to help your husband survive and send your children away with your parents?

This heart-wrenching choice is at the crux of a new book about a real-life couple, Emy and Lino Fernandez. Published this year, Fighting Castro: A Love Story (WingSpan, $18) tells the harrowing tale of how one man survived 17 years as a political prisoner in Cuba and how one woman lived with the difficult decision she made when she was only 23.

"It is their love story, " says author Kay Abella, a former journalist who lives in Connecticut, "but it's also a story of their love for their country" and their willingness to sacrifice to oppose the Castro government.

And the story has a happy ending.

Emy, 69, and Lino, 76, live in Coral Gables. He still practices, with his younger daughter, while Emy tends to the house and the parade of relatives who visit for coffee and hugs. Their children are grown now, with children of their own. A great-grandchild is due in the fall. One would expect that all is well that ends well.

But when the Fernandezes talk about those years, about the cruelty of prison and the anguish of separation, the emotion -- and tension -- remain palpable. Emy's eyes water. She escapes to the kitchen for a drink of water. When she returns, Lino reaches out to pat her hand.

Emy's decision to stay in Cuba to tend to her husband is best described in one paragraph after she sees her parents and three kids off at the airport: "She had to let go. They were with people who loved them -- safe and free. They were in her heart; they could not be in her life. Her life would center on Lino, on his survival."

Until they began collaborating with Abella on the book in 2000, the past was . . . well, past. The Fernandezes rarely spoke about the decision Emy had made and the suffering Lino had endured. When the couple arrived in Miami in 1979 as part of a general amnesty granted by the Cuban government, Lino wanted to make up for lost time and rushed through his medical license revalidation. Emy took a job as a secretary to make ends meet.

"When we came, we had to remake our lives, " Emy explains. "We were busy reacquainting ourselves with the children."

PAINFUL MEMORIES

But interviews for the book forced the painful memories out. "A lot of things came out that we had never talked about, " Emy says. "It was like reliving what we had left behind."

During the seven years of research and interviews, Lino worried that "the real story" would be lost in the telling. "This is not just an emotional story, " he explains. "I am part of a larger story."

And he is right. Abella skillfully manages to weave the tale of a young family with a panoramic view of the last 45 years of Cuban history. She recognized that sometimes the best way to recreate the past is through the eyes of an individual.

"You can take this story and put it in East Germany, and it would still be a great story about a couple determined to survive, " Abella says. "This is about the Cuban revolution and what it has done to families, but it's also about endurance and steadfastness."

Lino and Emy met when she was 16 and he was in medical school. They married in 1958, when he was 27 and she 20. Children arrived soon after.

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