When young Julian Campos attempted to leave Cuba five years ago, the Castro regime allowed his parents to travel on, but kept him back at the last moment. Julian was forced to become a cutter, laboring day after day in the muddy sugarcane fields. Now it seems he may have found a way out -- but is it impossibly dangerous? Julian has reached a point at which hope and forgiveness seem to be his enemies, and the shadows his only friends. In brief, vivid chapters, Virgil Suarez shows us the torrential Cuban rains, the barracks-bound life of the weary cutters as they struggle to meet the impossible "Ten-Million Ton" program, and the furtive conversations of those who would escape to freedom. "We are always caught up and swept along", said Vance Bourjaily of The Cutter: "A fine book".