Ambassador Huddleston was the senior US official in Cuba from 1999-2002, and in this exhilarating memoir recounts the Elián Gonzalez custody saga from the perspective she had of it on the ground in Havana. She also chronicles many face-to-face encounters she had with Fidel Castro, who with his machismo was always eager for an opportunity to embarrass or berate this American woman representing his sworn foe.
The perspective of a female diplomat at work for her country is an atypical one, Madeleine Albright’s 2013 memoir Madame Secretary notwithstanding. Co-author of a 2007 Brooking Institution report that was a blueprint for the Obama administration’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba, Huddleston writes about the unfortunate reversal of the Obama opening under the Trump administration, and her regret that the hardline policy may well drive Cuba in to the arms of Russia, China, or possibly even North Korea. She had a Letter to the Editor on this topic published in the NY Times last summer. At this time when the US State Department is suffering an unprecedented exodus from the ranks of the foreign service,
Huddleston will also speak on her book tour about what’s at stake when America sends its diplomats abroad, and the impact when we retreat from full engagement with the world.