Cesar, Nestor, and their three brothers grow up in the sugar-mill town of Las Piñas, in Oriente Province, Cuba. The family moves from the mill to a livestock farm where the father, Pedro Castillo, slaughters animals; he is proud of his physical strength and demands respect from his frightened sons with cruel beatings. The powerless mother, Maria, attributes his violent behavior to his hard life since childhood.

As a child, listening to a music box, Cesar learns to dance, and he enjoys orchestra performances. After he hears Eusebio Stevenson playing background music for Hollywood silent films in a movie theater, he requests lessons. Pucho, a mulatto, or person of mixed-race, teaches him music and magic African chants. Cesar challenges paternal authority when he decides to become a musician.

In 1937, at the age of nineteen, Cesar starts his singing career in Santiago de Cuba, invited by the well-known band leader Julián García. Nestor, also musically talented, joins the orchestra. Cesar marries the shy schoolteacher Luisa García, Julián’s niece; they live happily until Cesar starts drinking, shouting, and cheating on his wife. He loves Luisa and their daughter, Mariela, but his macho temperament leads him to fear the loss of freedom symbolized by married life. After they are divorced, Luisa marries a schoolteacher and has another child.

In Havana, as instrumentalists, composers, and singers, Cesar and Nestor struggle to earn a living at a time when American big brass jazz bands are in vogue. They had met Desi Arnaz in Santiago de Cuba and knew about his fame in the United States. Inspired by stories about Cubans who, since the 1930’s, had gotten rich making films in Hollywood or playing in New York, they daydream of achieving the same success.

The brothers arrive as immigrants in New York in early 1949, the beginning of the mambo boom. Sponsored by their cousin, Pablo, they get a job in a meat-packing plant. At night, playing in clubs and dance halls, they become performing stars, the Mambo Kings, with their own Latin dance band. They live with Pablo’s family near Harlem; his kindhearted wife, Miriam, provides warmth and Cuban home cooking.

Cesar remembers Cuba and misses his daughter, but he likes to look forward to a better future. Nestor thinks constantly about the past, tortured by memories of Maria Rivera, a beautiful mulatto dancer in Havana who had abandoned him after a passionate affair and married somebody else. He wants to believe that she still loves him and, hoping that a song will bring her back, he writes twenty-two different versions. The mournful tune of “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” catches the attention of Desi Arnaz, who invites the brothers to appear on his television show, I Love Lucy, performing the song that will make them famous.

The gregarious Cesar enjoys music, food, friendship, and women, while the somber Nestor writes songs expressing torment and sorrow. When Nestor meets Delores Fuentes, who cleans houses and hopes to be a teacher, she represents the prospect of a new love lifting him out of his melancholia. They are married and have two children, Eugenio and Leticia. Nestor feels unprepared for fatherhood; worried about his children’s physical health, he relives his own childhood of illness and near-death experiences.

Nestor’s wife arrives from Havana with her father, Daniel, in 1942, at the age of thirteen. Her mother remains in Cuba with the older sister, Ana Maria. The father’s unhappiness increases with the years. When he dies on the job, in 1949, Ana Maria comes to live with her sister, trying to make her go out instead of...