The Men From Miami

An exhilarating real-life Cold War thriller about the Americans who fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution - then switched sides to try to bring him down
Back in 1957, Castro was a hero to many in the USA for taking up arms against Cuba's dictatorial regime. Two dozen American adventurers joined his rebel band in the mountains, including fervent idealists, a trio of teens from the Guantánamo Bay naval base, a sleazy ex-con who liked underage girls, and at least two future murderers. Castro's eventual victory delighted the world - but then he ran up the red flag and some started wondering if they'd supported the wrong side.
A gang of disillusioned American volunteers - including future Watergate burglar Frank Fiorini and journalist Alex Rorke, whose 1963 disappearance remains unsolved - changed allegiances and joined the Cuban exiles, CIA agents and soldiers of fortune who had washed up in Miami ready to fight Castro's regime by any means necessary. These larger-than-life characters wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and went on to be implicated in President Kennedy's assassination, a failed invasion of 'Papa Doc' Duvalier's Haiti and the downfall of Richard Nixon.
The Cold War had arrived in Miami, and things would never be the same again.

Christopher Othen is a writer and former legal representative to asylum seekers. He is the author of Franco's International Brigades: Adventurers, Fascists, and Christian Crusaders in the Spanish Civil War, Katanga 1960-63: Mercenaries, Spies, and the African Nation that Waged War on the World and Lost Lions of Judah: Haile Selassie's Mongrel Foreign Legion. His latest book is The King of Nazi Paris: Henri Lafont and the Gangsters of the French Gestapo.