Island of Dreams

In May 1939, when 12-year-old Anna Mueller and her family flee Nazi Germany and find refuge on the paradise island of Cuba, she is full of hopes and dreams for a safe and happy future.

But a ghost from her parents’ past lives on the island, Freddie, an alcoholic ex-student of Professor Mueller, who Anna discovers is the father of her younger brother, Klaus.

When Anna befriends the family’s black houseboy, Jose, she learns of, and is incensed by the huge gulf between the rich and the poor on the politically corrupt island.

Professor Mueller soon gives up on his elder son, Hans, who soon swept up in the seedy side of Havana selling drugs and finally selling weapons to the warring political factions on the island.

Though the Professor wants Anna to follow him into medicine, she is determined to study politics at the university. She is angry at Freddie’s cynicism about her ideals to change society to help the poor.

As adults, Anna and Jose become lovers, and when Castro invades the island, in 1956, they join his small guerrilla army in the mountains.

But Anna discovers, through her father and Freddie, that Jose is a traitor. When she confronts Jose in their mountain hideout, he commits suicide.

With Freddie’s help Anna secretly goes to her father’s grave, risking her life. As Freddie drives her back to her army unit, she learns the real truth about Freddie and her mother. Anna and Freddie become lovers.

On New Year’s Day 1959, with Castro having defeated President Batista’s army, Anna is in victory parade as it enters a jubilant Havana.

Now pregnant with Freddie’s baby, Anna races to find her lover.

But what she finds is not what she hoped for.