Aida’s Story
Set in 1960s Spanish Harlem and Puerto Rico, this story follows a young Latina nursing student turned nationalist. As love and family clash with revolution, Aida embraces violent resistance for Puerto Rican independence. Told by her husband to their granddaughter after Hurricane Maria, this gripping novel explores identity, sacrifice, and the cost of freedom across generations.
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What They Are Saying
“This novel is a beautifully rendered story of two young people struggling to make their way in the turbulent world of East Harlem and Puerto Rico in the 1960s and early 70s. It is moving, troubling, and ultimately inspiring.”
—Cynthia Rivera Weissblum, President and CEO, Edwin Gould Foundation
“Tom Webber has written a poignant and original account of a love triangle. Jimmy Beecher, a Protestant Pastor’s son raised in Spanish Harlem in the 1950s, falls in love with and marries his neighbor, Aida García. But the marriage becomes increasingly troubled by the pledge Aida has made to support nationalist politics in her family’s homeland, Puerto Rico. Shifting between the 1960s and the present, poetic and a page-turner, AIDA’S STORY foregrounds the tenderness of young love faced with the cruelty and arbitrariness of historical forces.”
—Lyn Di Iorio, author of the prizewinning novel Outside the Bones, about Afro-Caribbean magic, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellow.
“AIDA’S STORY is an important novel set in East Harlem and Puerto Rico during the idyllic 1950s and the seismic shift that transpired in the 1960s. The story revolves around the love of two indelible young people: James Beecher, a white minister’s son, and Aida Garcia, a Puerto Rican woman imbued with the spirit to better her beloved island. I recommend it highly.”
—Christopher Bell, East Harlem Historian, author of “Walking East Harlem,” Images of America: East Harlem,” and “East Harlem Remembered.”
“As a person born and raised in East Harlem and dedicated to the East Harlem community I was fascinated to read this extraordinary novel of life in El Barrio more than fifty years ago. The characters come alive as does their gripping story. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Ingrid D. Sotelo, Chief Operating Officer, East Harlem Tutorial Program
“Tom has written a beautiful novel that reminds us of Puerto Rico’s continuing colonial status. It is a call to arms. Despierta Boricua.”
—Pedro Pedraza, former Director of Research at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY.
The Author
Thomas L. Webber was raised in the public housing projects of East Harlem and lived in El Barrio for over sixty years. A graduate of Harvard College with a Ph.D. from Columbia, an MFA from City College, and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Metropolitan College of New York, he was the founding Executive Director of Edwin Gould Academy, a residential school for adolescents in the NYC foster care/juvenile justice system. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife Andrea.
Buy the Book
Told in stark, moving language with telling historic details its mixture of romance, politics, and violence is reminiscent of novels like Hemingway’s, A Farewell to Arms.
