Yocandra is a young woman torn by her love for Cuba. She learns that for woman to survive in the world of Communist machismo, she has to use all she has: her body, her wits, and most of all her ability to transform disillusionment into a wonderful story. Attempting to use each of these methods as a way to escape, she always returns to the grim realities of the country she adores, the country she knows is smothering her. All of this is "in the manner of island women."

Alec Baxter, a Jewish architect from Queens now living in the Berkeley hills in a house he designed, is married to Gina, an artist whose career is beginning to take off. To escape his rocky marriage, he becomes involved in a long affair with a divorced young poet.

A family saga describing life among three generations of Cuban-Americans in Miami. Cuca, the family matriarch, is an elderly widow who consoles herself with her recollections of a happier life in Cuba. Her daughter Adela is a frivolous and pleasure-seeking divorcee, and Adela's daughter Maribel is an assimilated career woman. The interactions between the three provides a rich portrait of immigrant life in contemporary America.

Theodora Hecht Ottinger, known as Teddy, is a test pilot and also a bisexual feminist pop-cultural figure. She is asked by a magazine to interview Kalki, a cult leader who doesn't normally grant interviews. Kalki is actually a crazed veteran of the Vietnam War who fancies himself the incarnation of the god Shiva, and whose burning desire is to destroy the world. Gore Vidal's fierce and funny 1978 satire takes on religion, the feminist movement, the perils of ideology, and what he sees as the dangerous reluctance of average Americans to think for themselves.

Gore Vidal's DULUTH, which has become a cult favorite since its 1983 publication, is a satire of American life in the city of Duluth--which is not necessarily Duluth, Minnesota. In this rather plotless comic satire, Gore's fictional Duluth is also a TV show with a cast comprised of Duluth citizens who have died.