What Lies Across the Water

Is the man who blows up an airplane and kills dozens of civilians a murderous terrorist... or a valiant freedom fighter? Is the man who tries to stop the bomber a threat to national security... or a hero of the people? It depends. What Lies Across the Water is a narrative nonfiction thriller. About terrorists who blow up airplanes and try to overthrow governments. About intelligence agents who try to stop them. The twist is that these terrorists are not Muslim. They’re Cuban exiles. And the men trying to stop them? Cuban intelligence agents. What Lies Across the Water is an in-the-moment narrative nonfiction thriller that tells the true story of five Cuban intelligence agents who were dispatched to Florida in the 1990s to stop militant Miami exiles from launching terrorist attacks against their homeland. The book recounts the parallel, converging, diverging stories of the exile militants, Cuban intelligence officers and FBI agents as they clash in Havana, Miami and the Straits of Florida. The story moves from the streets of Little Havana to real Havana’s Tropicana nightclub, from the hotel bar at the Copacabana Hotel to the inner sanctum of the White House—and back. What Lies Across the Water climaxes when Cuba’s intelligence agents—the Cuba Five—are arrested and sentenced to long prison terms while the exile terrorists go free.

STEPHEN KIMBER is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of nine books, including the novel, Reparations, and the bestselling nonfiction books, Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair Crash and Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War. His most recent book, What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, was long-listed for a Libris Award as the best Canadian nonfiction book in 2013, and was named the top nonfiction book at the East Coast Literary Awards. In 2016, the Spanish edition won a Reader's Choice Award as one of the top 10 best-selling books in Cuba. For more than thirty years, he taught journalism fulltime at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada. From 1996-2003, in 2007-08 and again in 2013-14, he served as Director of the School of Journalism. In 2013, he co-founded King’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. Visit his website at stephenkimber.com