Posted on Tue, Jul. 22, 2008

The connection seems obvious now, but when she first started writing, Rachel Kushner didn't even consider tapping into her family's rich trove of memories. She focused instead on the business of learning to write: perfecting her short-story technique, working steadily toward a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, then an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia.

Then in 2000, as her master's-degree graduation gift, Kushner's mother and two aunts took her to Cuba, where they had spent part of their childhood. In 1952, their father had accepted a position as a nickel-mine executive in Oriente Province. Kushner suddenly realized she had a perfect backdrop for a novel.

Her highly praised Telex to Cuba (Scribner, $25), which she will discuss Thursday at Books & Books in Coral Gables, follows the experiences of two children in the expatriate towns of Nicaro and Preston, 600 miles east of Havana. One is the daughter of the nickel-mine operator, the other the son of the manager of United Fruit Co.'s sugar operation. Three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit's cane fields stretched beyond the Americans' gated community. In the middle of the plantation lay 100 acres owned by Fidel and Raul Castro's father.

The novel also incorporates the story of French agitator Christian de La Mazière, who meets a cabaret dancer and becomes involved in the politics of revolution.

The plot doesn't exactly mirror the experiences of her mother and aunts, Kushner says, but the details of Nicaro and its famous revolutionary neighbors are true, the product of years of research combing through libraries, letters and her family's exhaustive records. She interviewed Nicaro residents and dug through old copies of company magazines.

''When I was growing up, I was very aware of that background,'' Kushner says from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and son. ``It was a big part of how my mother thinks of herself, as someone who got to live in this amazing place, this rural, free world for a child to grow up in. I had always heard stories.''

And now she's telling them.

Q:Was the 2000 trip your mom's first time in Cuba since childhood?

A: She had never been back. They were the only Americans to have come back [to Nicaro] at that point. It was very dramatic. . . . The U.S. government makes it hard to go back. My mother in certain ways was sympathetic to the revolution, but she is a law-abiding person and didn't want to break the law to go.

Q:How did you incorporate all your research with the actual creation of a fictional story?

A: I had to separate myself from my research and not let it get in the way. It's not a historical genre novel, so I needed [the facts] to sift their way into the plot so they could seem organic. My grandparents were packrats. They had every piece of correspondence they ever got. I have the calling card of a gentleman who came to tune their piano, receipts for what they bought, and I went through all that stuff. . . . My grandmother wrote a detailed letter every week and mimeographed it and sent to her family. She'd write, ''The servants eat too much food.'' She goes on and on about life in Cuba. But the book is not nonfiction; it's not based on my family's experience in the way one might think, so I needed it to stand on its own as fiction.

Q: Why did you tell the story from three perspectives?

A: I wanted to be able to portray the revolution in full. The Cuban revolution is perceived differently according to who is telling the story. Some people had a lot to lose. Other people had something to gain. In the 20th century people were drawn to revolution for their own personal reasons. My Frenchman is something of an adventurer with a cynical world view at a moment when so much of the world is decolonizing. He's a war profiteer. I wanted to portray revolution through the eyes of somebody who is under no illusions, no ideological thrust.

Q:If you had no family ties to Cuba, would you have been interested in writing about the subject anyway?

A: I would have been interested. My undergraduate background is in political science and Latin American studies. Cuban political history is one of the most fantastically baroque tales. Not just the revolution but all the way back. Elements like how the Haitian revolution affected planter society in the Oriente province. . . . Cuba has such a streak of independence. It's a very intellectual society and has always has been such a rich culture -- the literature, the music, the architecture and art.

Q: Did having all this terrific access to this story hinder you from coming up with an idea for your next novel?

A: It didn't, partly because the book taught me how to synthesize ideas close to my heart. I realize now books can become a kind of social history as fiction and that characters can tell you about that time and place. They're not just immersed in their own domestic dramas. A good model of that style is Don DeLillo. I'm very excited that the book gave me confidence that I can use these tools.