Laura Cristina Platas
Author of Middle Grade and Adult Fiction
Thank you for visiting my website. Here you'll find links to my short stories and books as well as works-in-progress. I love to hear from readers so do reach out via my contact information below.
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Coming June 2025!
Set in Miami, Havana, Atlanta, and a village in Spain, these stories and essays about family, loss, and resilience, feature los viejos, the exiled old Cubans who remember pre-1959 Cuba, and the stories they were told about the generation before theirs, who lived in poor villages in northwest Spain and dreamed of emigrating to an island of sun and opportunity.
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For ages 13+
For Middle Grade Readers, ages 8-11
​Havana, 1961. On the night of Yiya Ávila's tenth birthday, Castro’s men armed with machine guns crash the party and arrest her father. Fearing for their lives in Cuba's increasingly dangerous political climate, Yiya, her mother, and her brother lock the doors to their home and flee to New York City. Yiya hates being a refugee, an alien surrounded by a new language and culture. It's like living on Mars. But she has to learn to be brave even in the face of a bully, a frightening break in, a heartbreaking loss, and a betrayal she cannot forgive. As more and more time passes, Yiya wonders if she will ever see her father alive again, if she will ever go home, if life will ever return to normal.
For readers 13+
Coming July 2025!
Historical fiction based on my Cuban family’s experiences in Havana as Castro rose in power from 1959 to 1962. The book follows the Morales family who are embittered with grief after the iron-fisted Batista murders their third and youngest brother. Then when Castro deposes Batista, it is their fervent hope to regain a sense of normalcy in their beloved Cuba.
While Cuba’s freedoms fall like dominoes, each brother finds himself working covertly with the CIA-backed underground to overthrow a regime they helped bring to power. Evading snitching neighbors, family betrayals, and secret police forces, they each maintain their covert work for eighteen months, culminating in harrowing attempts to seek exile in January 1962.
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