In 1978, when Nieve finds herself caught between the tides of her parents' turbulent relationship and a country in turmoil, she begins to record the intimate and harsh details of her life within the pages of her diary. Becoming her sole means of expression, the diary is her only constant and her only friend. From being sent away from her mother and her mother’s free-spirited and loving boyfriend in her childhood city of Cienfuegos to live with her abusive father, an alcoholic theater actor, to being forced to call herself a Cuban “revolutionary Pioneer,” Nieve records in honest detail a life in which she loses those she loves the most—and can do nothing about it. Mirroring its author's own experiences between the ages of eight and twenty, Everyone Leaves paints a vivid portrait of family life and social and political unrest in Castro's Cuba while exploring how the patriarchal and conformist notions of the Revolution betrayed the nation's women.