Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

The posthumously published final novel of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hijuelos is a thoroughly researched but fictionalized tale of the relationships between Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and Dorothy Stanley, Henry's artistic and aristocratic wife. The tale follows Twain and Stanley together on a trip to Cuba before either was famous, through the years of their acquaintance in post-Civil War America and Victorian England, and up until the secrets of the Cuba trip are revealed to Dorothy by Twain after her husband's death. The work focuses more on Stanley than on Twain and examines themes of love, friendship, family, religion, death, pain, and paradise. The narration is high quality and headlined by James Langton. Hijuelos's wife reads both the author's note and her very touching afterword.