It's been a while since Cuba, that caiman-shaped Caribbean isle, ceased to be a place on the map. At some point, it came unhinged and floated away, transformed into a gilded reflecting pool, a repository of dreams. Those with hope or memory (true or false) called out: Here lies utopia, whether the socialist fantasy or the golden recollections of its exiles. Cuba is, or was, or could be, an exemplary nation, a veritable beacon, egalitarian and progressive.

For a small country--about 68,000 square miles and a population of just over 11 million, the navel of the Americas--this is an awesome, crushing burden. Because if Cuba inspires, it also provokes despair.

Alma Guillermoprieto's bittersweet memoir Dancing with Cuba is about falling in love with this mythic place or, more precisely, trying to. It is also about the tense relationship between realism and idealism, a sympathetic yet ultimately unsparing account of a personal odyssey that ends not triumphantly but nonetheless extraordinarily.

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