If you want to ease yourself into something other than Civil War novels, you may want to read the diaries of some Southern women of the era. You will then get the "Southern Belle-itis" and other woman-stuff of the period without the man-stuff about whether Lee should have followed Longstreet's advice to attempt to turn the Union left flank at Gettysburg instead of.....
The diaries would include:
You know of any good historical fiction set in Cuba from an author that actually researched it well? I'd love to read something like that. It has to have a little romance involved though.
Romance?
Well.....ummmm.....Jeez, honeygrl, Cuban guys don't go around reading romance!
Wouldn't you like to consider a good book on how Mahan's concepts of seapower affect the military logistics and therefore the military outcome in any conflict on islands such as Britain and Cuba and therefore account for the longevity of the defending forces on such......
You're nodding off already. O.K. Romance......
(Mutter, mutter.......Yeah, Cuban and Southern guys talk tough but the fact is that we have a ring through our noses and are led around by women who talk sweetly and ask nicely......Why can't my California-born wife get off her feminist horse and be more like a Southern or Cuban lady....Mutter, muttter....)
Research. Research......
O.K. Here are two.
Back during the Cuban Wars of Independence from Spain, a certain Evangelina Cisneros caught America's fancy as a damsel in distress when she was rescued from a Spanish prison by an American reporter from the Hearst newspaper chain. On a hunch, I did a search and, sure enough, someone sat down and wrote a historical novel about it with romance in it.
A while back, someone gave me a contemporary novel about three Cuban women on different sides of the Castro Revolution that's been sitting unread on my bookshelves for years. The reviews say that it has a little bit of romance in it in the form of letters to a long lost love from the gandmother's earlier days.
If you read any of them, let me know how you liked them.
Cuban men don't go around reading about romance, but we do read about passion.