Playing with light

"Rebecca Barrios, a well-off Miami Beach housewife (and she hates that description, by the way), has decided to revive the old Cuban tradition of the tertulia, or women's get-together.". "Buying a batch of beautiful white wicker rocking chairs for her porch is the easy part. Convincing old friends to gather at her house every Friday from all over town is more difficult, until the resourceful Becky hits upon the notion of a reading group. The book that las girlfriends finally settle upon is an obscure historical novel, the saga of a nineteenth-century clan of Havana dressmakers. Its title? Playing with Light.". "Oddly, as the friends read ever deeper into their chosen story, strange things begin to happen to them. Each woman seems to be...sucked in...and affected (not necessarily pleasantly) by the surreal chronicle of the Santa Cruz family.". "In fact, the two worlds - the real and the fictional, the American and the Cuhan, the living present and the (supposedly) long-dead past - have begun to relentlessly intertwine in unsettling ways. As what initially seemed a light-hearted, even frothy, fictional fantasia builds to a powerful and disturbing climax, Rebecca can't help but wonder what kind of story they've all gotten themselves into."--BOOK JACKET.