The Skinny Years

Surfers soul brothers hippies and thugs--theyre all part of Victor Skinny Delgados world growing up in Miami during the turbulent 1960s. Fleeing the Castro regime in Cuba Skinnys once-wealthy family moves from a mansion in Havana to a roach-infested bungalow in Miamis low-rent Wynwood district. Over the next ten years the Delgados struggle to survive in this strange new land--a place where fat men in red suits enter your home through the chimney demons appear at the door begging for candy and young women go on dates without chaperones. Theres only one constant in Skinnys world as he grows from 8 to 18. He longs in vain for the girl of his dreams: his neighbor Janice Bockman who seems everything American--and everything hes not.