His code-name is Atcho. He leads guerrilla fighters through the US-supported insurgency that rages at the Bay of Pigs in the early days of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Captured and cast into the island’s worst dungeons, Atcho learns that a phantom-like officer of the Soviet KGB shadows him. Inexplicably released from incarceration and still dedicated to his country, he battles through the bowels of the Kremlin in Moscow, into the granite halls at West Point, and finally to highest levels in Washington, DC. Atcho’s rise opens doors into US National Defense even as the seemingly omniscient KGB officer holds unflinching sway over his actions. His public life clashes with secrets that only he and his tormentor share, isolating him in a world of intrigue among people whom he is determined not to betray – and then he finds that he is the trigger that could spark thermonuclear war.
There is much in “Curse The Moon” that is based on real events, and two of the primary characters, Atcho and his daughter, Isabel, were actually based on my father-in-law and my wife. In fact, the code-name “Atcho” is my father-in-law’s real nickname. He actually fought in the counterrevolution against Castro, was imprisoned after the Bay of Pigs, and spent 17 years in some of Castro’s worst prisons. In the book, he is a composite character. Some of the fictional Atcho’s expo its were the real Atcho’s, and some were accomplished by others in the resistance. The real aspects in the book are the abject cruelty that the Castro regime imposed, and that intrepidity and courage that Cuban patriots exhibited in resisting him. The other very real aspect was the relationship between both the real and fictional Atchos and their fictional and real respective daughters. Both grew up with their fathers having been stripped from their homes and country, and witnessed much of the savagery as little girls. That stayed with my wife such that, although on a cognitive basis she understood and was even proud of the courage of her father, on a deeper level, she suffered from his absence and felt a sense of having been abandoned - other men escaped Cuba with their families intact. My initial motivation for writing the book was as a tribute to the real Atcho and my wife. In researching it, I found a story with all the elements of a thriller, and one that should be told: a near holocaust took place 90 miles south of Florida, and most Americans know nothing about it. Further, because of its strategic location just off the US coast, Cuba occupied an outsized place in the Cold War competition between the US and the Soviet Union. This story takes the Cuban revolution as its launching point, but then also delves into the strained and often subtle relations between the two superpowers in the waining days of the Cold War. It questions the actions of John Kennedy, brings alive the charm and personality of Ronald Reagan, and views Nikolai Gorbachev with curiosity.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Curse the Moon. I was fully engaged by the end of page 1, and found it difficult to put down. Lee Jackson successfully captured the suspense and drama one craves in a work of fiction while remaining true to historical context. His vivid descriptions of conditions and events during the Bay of Pigs and subsequent US / USSR relations were riveting. I was so immersed in the story that as I made my way from scene to scene, chapter by chapter, I felt as if I was right there in the thick of the jungle, enduring the pain of the prison, on the plane, or wherever Atcho was at the time. Curse The Moon is a fantastic read that you should enjoy now. James Vaughn
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