His Old Sin

This legacy of letters begins during the summer of '49: hers, restrained yet quivering with romance, his, daily postcards to convince her to marry after knowing each other four months. She says, *I do*, convinced that a sophisticated European will achieve the American Dream, one for which she risked her life during WWII. But when an irregularity in my father's Alien status surfaces in 1950, the solution of exiting the States briefly and returning with a new visa goes haywire, resulting in tortured letters exchanged between Havana and Connecticut for almost three years. They're a time capsule of the McCarthy Era, of Truman and Eisenhower, of Ad Men on Wall Street selling a dream.

My parents' biography crosses an ocean as three generations rise up to the American Dream. Their hardworking lives are rewarded by magical evenings at a brownstone in Manhattan, but shocked by the 1938 McKesson & Robbin's scandal, one that ended when my Aunt Carol wiped up her husband's blood with her nightgown.

Trust and betrayal: alternating currents that feed familial relationships. How will we end our days? Repairing or regretting?