Beatriz Rivera was born on September 27, 1957, in Havana, Cuba, but at the age of three, she immigrated to the United States (soon after Castro's rise to power) with her parents, Mario Lorenzo and Aida (Rufin) Rivera. She lived with her family in Miami, Florida, until her high school years, when her parents sent her to Switzerland to complete her early education.

When it was time to go to college, Rivera chose to live in France, where she attended the Sorbonne, majoring in philosophy and eventually receiving her master's degree in 1979. Upon graduation, Rivera decided that she was not yet ready to return to the United States, so she found a job teaching English and Spanish in French schools. It was during this period that she also began writing her first novel.

Rivera lived in Paris for ten years, believing that she would never return to the...