If there is one book I look forward to reading in Autumn, it is La Belle Créole: The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid, and Paris…. García-Lapuerta recounts the life of a fascinating women who epitomizes the rich cultural history of Cuba and its profound effect on Western Arts and Letters.
Charles Bane, Jr. Pushcart Prize nominated author of The Chapbook, Love Poems; creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, and nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
A fascinating book about a charming personality who deserves to be remembered.
Hugh Thomas, award-winning author of numerous works including Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom; The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870; and Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico.
La Belle Creole is an extraordinary tale of a beautiful warm-hearted woman born into the fabulous wealth of the 18/19th century Cuban aristocracy. Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, (later Countess Merlin) nevertheless found the strength to assert her independence and carve out her own place in the world. Escaping from a convent in Havana she braved war-torn Napoleonic Spain to re-invent herself as one of the great salonnières of Louis-Philippe’s Paris. Against the grain of her time she became a soprano acclaimed by Rossini, Liszt and Chopin and the author of books including one of the best accounts of contemporary Cuba, the classic Voyage to Havana.
In this meticulously researched fascinating book, Alina Garcia-Lapuerta not only introduces us to an inspiring heroine but shows us what biography at its best can do.
Jehanne Wake, author of the critically acclaimed Princess Louise Queen Victoria’s Unconventional Daughter and Sisters of Fortune: America’s Caton Sisters at Home and Abroad