A touching story, and likely more common, in one variation or another, than it may at first seem. Among other things, I have in mind lives that come to be defined by one event which casts its spell, be it evil, enlightening, forgiving—over all the other years. The story I am going to tell, or retell, comes from Windmills in Brooklyn, a novel-memoir by a now forgotten Spanish-American writer, Prudencio de Pereda (b. 1912). Before getting to all this, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Brooklyn, Cuban cigars, dancing, life, memoir, New York, novels, Spanish