Coming Clean: The True Story of a Cocaine Drug Lord and His Unexpected Encounter with God

Like many middle-class refugees from Castro's Cuba, Vald s (currently an adjunct professor at Wheaton College) found poverty at the home of his welcoming relatives in Miami, Fla. With discrimination and prejudice his unexpected companions, Vald s soon learned that money brought status and power. Exchanging his mother's faith in the power of God for his own desire for tangible goods, Vald s used his connections in the Cuban community to build a legitimate accounting business. Soon he was misusing this business as a front for international drug deals and money-laundering, and his formerly happy marriage became adulterous. Vald s documents his fall clearly and honestly, presenting a gritty and excessive underworld. During his first stint in prison for international drug trafficking, Vald s continued to expand his drug cartel operations, but the second time around, after he had given up the ""business,"" he began to understand his craving for power and surrendered his life to Christ. Although Vald s conscientiously tries to document all of the Christian influences that led to his change of heart, the intensely personal nature of conversion makes for a choppy denouement, requiring the reader to fill in the necessary blanks. In spite of these flaws, Vald s's rags-to-riches-to-religion story is quite enthralling and should also be of interest to a general readership. (Sept.)