Praise For
OUR WOMAN IN HAVANA

“Few on this side of the Florida Straits know Cuba better than Vicki Huddleston... She has written an extraordinary firsthand account and one that only an intrepid diplomat serving both Republican and Democratic presidents—could have experienced, and written.”

— Ann Louise Bardach, Author Of
Cuba Confidential And Without Fidel

A Diplomat's Chronicle of America's Long Struggle with Castro's Cuba

“As someone who has lived most of my life in Miami, and who has seen the effect of U.S. policy toward Cuba up close and very personal, I found Our Woman in Havana to be a remarkable inside account of the real news that was behind the headlines I’ve followed for years. As a bookseller, I know this book will be enthusiastically embraced by my customers and I look forward to offering it to them.”

— Mitchell Kaplan, Founder Of Books & Books;
Co-Founder Of Miami Book Fair

Praise For
OUR WOMAN IN HAVANA

“Our Woman in Havana is a brilliant account of a diplomat’s challenges in formulating a sound policy consensus amid the shifting sands of domestic political, economic, and familial interests in Washington, Miami, and Havana. It is also an inspiring foreign service story of a diplomat abroad, charged with providing information and advice to Washington while advancing US policy objectives in an often hostile environment.

— Ambassador Joseph Wilson

A Diplomat's Chronicle of America's Long Struggle with Castro's Cuba

“As one of America’s top Cuba hands, Huddleston has been a privileged eyewitness to key moments of history as well as backroom policy debates. Huddleston’s anecdotes of her life in Havana—everything from spy stories to an argument with Fidel she had at a cocktail party—are sometimes poignant, at other times hilarious, and always delightfully candid.”

— Jon Lee Anderson
Author Of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

vicki huddlestonAmbassador 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.

© Copyright - Vicki Huddleston - Our Woman in Havana