Ever feel like you’re a minor character in someone else’s story? That’s exactly how I felt reading Mia Leonin‘s new memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press, 2009). Because that’s exactly what I am, a bystander and at times an enabler in the author’s search for identity. Long have I entertained our mutual acquaintance by reciting Mia’s fairy-tale-like origin, always starting with the phrase: “She has the most amazing story.” But that’s all over now. She’s told the story herself. And told it her unmistakable, lyrical prose.

I first met Leonin a dozen years ago, before the publication of her award-winning books of poetry, Braid (1999) and Unravelling the Bed (2008). By then, she was deep in her quest to discover the heritage hidden from her because her Southern mother decided not to reveal the identity of her Cuban father until Mia turned 16. I heard the events she recounts in her memoir sitting on the futon in her tiny South Beach studio as we recovered from our late night dancing jags. I saw her fall in love with a Cuban philosopher we met at a salsa club in Bogotá, and later met her jealous, percussionist boyfriend in Havana. I remember her grief when she returned to Miami and learned of her father’s passing while she had been searching for his spirit abroad.

But, oh, how much more beautiful all that reads in Leonin’s memoir. A perpetual outsider, she mines language for hidden meaning and explores the deepest resonance of words we take for granted. Just so, as she explores Cuba through her Missouri eyes, she discovers new depths of meaning in both cultures.

Not exactly an impartial review? Check out these raves by strangers in Repeating Islands.com, Miami New Times, and the Miami Herald.

Mia Leonin reads from Havana and Other Missing Fathers at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 23 at Books and Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, 305-442-4408. www.booksandbooks.com.