Introduction

Evangelina Cisneros is a very beautiful nineteen-year-old girl who, along with her father, is active in the struggle to oust the Spanish from Cuba in the late 1890s. When her father is arrested, she pleads his case to a Spanish general, who falls in love with her. She spurns his advances and is herself thrown in jail for her revolutionary activities.

When reports of her imprisonment reach the New York papers, Evangelina becomes a cause cilhbre among the city's many society women. William Randolph Hearst, recognizing an opportunity, sends one of his star journalists, Karl Decker, to Havana on the pretense of interviewing her when in fact he is on a mission to effect her escape. As she tells him her story, the two find themselves falling in love. Back in America, Decker's wife is becoming increasingly suspicious of her husband's absences. After a frightening escape, Evangelina and Karl arrive in New York, where they are heralded as heroes. But then they must inevitably face Decker's wife and a decision that will affect all their lives.

Based on a true story, White Rose is part romance and love story and part spy thriller. Set in both the exotic, primitive world of Cuba and the high-society milieu of Manhattan in 1897, here is a story that will inspire the imagination and capture the heart.Evangelina Cisneros is a very beautiful nineteen-year-old girl who, along with her father, is active in the struggle to oust the Spanish from Cuba in the late 1890s. When her father is arrested, she pleads his case to a Spanish general, who falls in love with her. She spurns his advances and is herself thrown in jail for her revolutionary activities.

When reports of her imprisonment reach the New York papers, Evangelina becomes a cause cilhbre among the city's many society women. William Randolph Hearst, recognizing an opportunity, sends one of his star journalists, Karl Decker, to Havana on the pretense of interviewing her when in fact he is on a mission to effect her escape. As she tells him her story, the two find themselves falling in love. Back in America, Decker's wife is becoming increasingly suspicious of her husband's absences. After a frightening escape, Evangelina and Karl arrive in New York, where they are heralded as heroes. But then they must inevitably face Decker's wife and a decision that will affect all their lives.

Based on a true story, White Rose is part romance and love story and part spy thriller. Set in both the exotic, primitive world of Cuba and the high-society milieu of Manhattan in 1897, here is a story that will inspire the imagination and capture the heart.

Editorial Review

Like a Victorian lady daintily lifting her skirts over a mud puddle, Amy Ephron pays a visit to the Cuban revolution of the 1890s. In A Cup of Tea, Ephron created a species of historical fiction that combined the coolly modern with the lushly romantic. She returns to form in White Rose, telling the partially true story of Evangelina Cisneros, a beautiful, spirited teenager who's been imprisoned for her part in the movement to free Cuba from Spanish rule. Karl Decker is a reporter for the New York Journal--a newspaper whose all-too-appropriate motto is "While others talk... 'The Journal' acts." William Randolph Hearst sends Decker on a secret mission to rescue the girl. The plan is to import her to the States as "a symbol of her country's struggle, the flower of Cuba." Hearst wants to redirect U.S. policy, encouraging greater American support for the revolutionaries and perhaps even an annexation of Cuba. Leaving behind a wife and child in Washington, Decker heads to Havana to plot a daring rescue. He succeeds in freeing Evangelina, and the two fall in love at the very moment she climbs into his arms from her jail cell. "He held her to him for a moment, he felt her breath on his shoulder, her rapid heart beat against his chest." But Ephron's lovers find themselves star-crossed, as lovers will. The second half of the novel is devoted to the political and marital fall-out of their union. Along the way, the author makes free with grammar and punctuation, opening up her sentences in a lazy, tropical way which will seem poetic to some and annoying to others. To wit: "There was a rope tied to a willow tree in the garden as if a child had used it for a swing and the night jasmine blooming fresh in the air." --Claire Dederer

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