The second volume, "Palace of the White Skunks," focuses on adolescent Fortunato who was raised in a house of frustrated aunts, a primal grandmother, and an emasculated grandfather. Set during the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the novel follows the main character as he clumsily joins the rebels. The acclaimed editor, Thomas Colchie, has written, that in this work, “Arenas has created a haunting family portrait, combining the lyrical empathy of a Tennessee Williams toward his characters’ troubled lives with a radically fractured narrative that pays dark tribute less to Faulkner than to the schizophrenia of life under any dictatorial extreme.” (Colchie 2001)