La Belle Créole

June 16, 2014
Just as Cuba’s earliest female author, María de las Mercedes de Santa Cruz y Montalvo (often called La Belle Créole), enchanted 19th-century Europeans with lush descriptions of her homeland, García-Lapuerta captures the reader’s imagination with vivid details of Mercedes’s life in Cuba, Madrid, and Paris. Drawing on Mercedes’s memoirs, along with contemporary letters and accounts, García-Lapuerta depicts the vivacious and daring Mercedes as an influential figure in aristocratic circles on both sides of the Atlantic. The biography begins with Mercedes’s early years, which she spent with her great-grandmother while her parents traveled the globe. Shortly after her father returned, Mercedes was whisked away to foreign lands, where she remained for a significant portion of her life—first Spain and then, as political tensions and her husband’s position in Napoleon’s defeated army dictated, France. In Paris, Mercedes grew into an accomplished society woman, hosting salons that attracted famous musicians, writers, and other members of high society. She won acclaim as an amateur soprano before turning to writing, the talent that cemented her legacy in Latin American history. García-Lapuerta’s beautifully written account of La Belle Créole illuminates lesser-known aspects of 19th-century transatlantic culture and the roles powerful women were able to play in it.

September 1, 2014

Born into an aristocratic creole Cuban family, Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo (1789-1852) left Cuba at 13, first landing in Madrid before settling in Paris. Upon marrying a French general of the Napoleonic era, she became a well-known Parisian socialite and even hosted a musical salon that attracted a variety of artistic talents. Garcia-Lapuerta, like her subject a native of Havana, explores the life of this fascinating woman--known as the Countess of Merlin--in her incisive debut. This work marks the first full-length English-language biography of the countess and draws upon her letters, memoirs, and contemporary news accounts to make a highly readable story. The countess returned to Havana in 1840 and wrote about her trip in a travel account published in French and Spanish. Subsequently, she wrote two historical accounts of Cuba that were read worldwide. Her most prominent work, Viaje a la Habana, was published in 1844 and is still cited in histories of the country. VERDICT An influential biography that will captivate readers of all types.--Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL

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