Gloriosa Ana María de los
Angeles Larragoity Cubillas Nieves de Donostia—Ana for short—is slight for a Spanish aristocrat, and unfashionably dark-skinned. In convent school in the 1830s, having eccentrically buried her not-so-pretty nose in a journal of a conquistador, she decides to become one, after a fashion, herself. "Ana despaired that she was born female and centuries too late to be an explorer and adventurer," writes Esmeralda Santiago, author of
When I Was Puerto Rican*. A decades-long story about marriage, slavery, and calculated choices—Ana makes an unspoken, unnatural pact with her young husband and his twin brother
—Conquistadora (Knopf) is a splendid expedition into colonial history complete with enrapturing suspense to the very end.
*Change made to the review on 7/6/11
