Ninety Miles, A Lifetime Away: A Closer Look at 90 Miles 2.0

Miami Wire Contributor

By: AR MEDIA

The stretch of water between Havana and Key West is just ninety miles, but in 90 Miles 2.0 by Jose L. Gonzalez, that narrow channel becomes an entire universe of risk, loss, and enduring hope.

Told as a full-length screenplay rather than a traditional novel, 90 Miles 2.0 drops readers into the heart of the Cuban Revolution and follows its aftershocks across generations. Gonzalez blends political thriller, love story, and immigrant saga into a compelling cinematic experience you read instead of watching.

A Movie on the Page

From the opening sequence, debris from a makeshift raft drifting in the turquoise sea as a TV anchor reports on Cuban rafters found dead and alive, the book announces its style. Scene headings, camera directions, close-ups, voice-overs, and even musical cues gently guide the reader like a director’s notes.

We then cut to present-day Miami: a Ferrari cruising through Coral Gables, a lavish quinceañera underway, a proud father named Pepe and his daughter, Lucia, celebrating her fifteenth birthday. When Lucia asks her father for the full truth about her late mother, Alicia, the story pivots into an extended flashback. The rest of the script becomes Pepe’s long-held confession: how he and Alicia fell in love, how they were drawn into Fidel Castro’s circle, and how their revolution gradually turned into a nightmare.

It’s a bold structural choice. Once you accept you’re “watching” the story unfold, the format creates remarkable immediacy. Scenes feel like shots. Dialogue snappily flows. The world of pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba comes alive with visual detail.

Love, Revolution, and Exile

At its heart, 90 Miles 2.0 is powered by a love story set against a collapsing country. Pepe and Alicia’s relationship unfolds as they fundraise, strategize, and mingle with revolutionaries eager to topple Batista’s corrupt regime. In early scenes, the idealism is contagious: wealthy Cubans pooling resources, fiery speeches against corruption, an almost romantic faith in change.

Then the shadows creep in. Mob money enters the picture. Allies are killed under mysterious circumstances. Fidel and Che emerge not only as charismatic leaders but as men increasingly willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to consolidate power. Gonzalez does not soften the brutality: torture, betrayal, and executions are depicted with an unflinching eye. The choice feels intentional. This is a story about what happens when noble slogans mask ruthless methods.

Eventually, Pepe and his circle face the hardest decision of all: stay and risk death or complicity, or flee and risk everything else. The “ninety miles” of the title becomes a metaphor for exile itself: the short distance that separates homeland from a new life, memory from reinvention, grief from possibility.

The frame in Miami, Lucia demanding to know her parents’ truth, gives this history a deeply personal anchor. She stands in for a new generation born into prosperity and safety, yet still shaped by the unspoken traumas of parents and grandparents who crossed those ninety miles.

A Story Only an Insider Could Tell

What gives 90 Miles 2.0 such emotional weight is the unmistakable sense that the author has lived close to this material. Gonzalez was born in Havana and came to Miami as a child, speaking no English and facing the harsh reality of starting over in a country where signs still read, “No Negros, No Cubans & No Pets.” Those early experiences, fear, humiliation, and determination echo through the script.

That authenticity shows up in the details: the way exile families hustle through odd jobs, the way they talk about “the old country,” the way politics is never an abstract topic but a personal wound. While this is a dramatized work, it carries the texture of real memories and real losses.

In a particularly meaningful choice, Gonzalez presents the script in both English and Spanish. The second half of the book, 90 Millas 2.0, mirrors the story for Spanish-speaking readers. That bilingual structure appears to be an act of bridge-building, between Cuba and the US, between grandparents telling stories in Spanish and grandchildren reading them in English.

For Readers Who Love History with a Heartbeat

90 Miles 2.0 will resonate most with readers who may be drawn to political thrillers grounded in real events, have an interest in immigrant and exile stories, appreciate cinematic storytelling, or have an interest in Latin American history. It’s also a love story that doesn’t shy away from the personal toll of conviction.

By the final pages, what lingers most is the persistence of hope, not just the brutality of the past. Gonzalez ends by reminding us that, decades later, many Cuban Americans still hold on to a single dream: to one day return to a free Cuba.

Ninety miles, a lifetime away, and for the characters in this powerful story, the distance is measured not just in geography but in love, sacrifice, and the stories families finally find the courage to tell.