In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro's rule of their Cuban homeland, the Gonz lez family--an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children--landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, eleven-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo...