The Eternal Forest: A Memoir of the Cuban Diaspora with Elena Sheppard

The first of her family to be born in the U.S., Elena Sheppard tells a powerful story of leaving and remembering, the Cuban Revolution and its diaspora. Through a spellbinding blend of cultural myth, historical texts, and personal narrative, The Eternal Forest seeks to understand the nature of inheritance, how trauma and memory are passed down through generations, and what it means to yearn for a place you can never fully know.

Her grandparents’ memories became the foundation of Sheppard’s childhood. They remembered Cifuentes, Cuba as an Eden, but when Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 Sheppard’s grandfather, Gustavo, was placed on a list of political undesirables. By the end of 1960, the couple and their two daughters temporarily fled to Florida; they never returned, a piece of each of their identities frozen in that moment. Sheppard travels back and forth in time, and as we traverse the narrow Florida Straits that separate Miami and Havana, we also discover family secrets that are on the brink of being lost to memory.

Elena Sheppard’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, The New Yorker, Vogue, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and W, as well as on NBC and MSNBC. She has been a writer-in residence at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and taught creative nonfiction and journalism in Columbia’s High School Summer Program. She lives in New York with her husband and children.