The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch

Book excerpt: Eliza Lynch met Francisco Solano Lp̤ez in Paris, when she was nineteen and he was in Europe to recruit engineers for the first railroad in South America. He left several months later with a pregnant Eliza beside him. Reviled by Asuncin̤ society and the family of her lover, who never married her, Eliza nevertheless had her son baptized his heir. In less than a decade, Lp̤ez became dictator and plunged Paraguay into a conflict that would kill over half its population. By then Eliza was notorious-as both the angel of the battlefield, inspiring the troops, and the demon driving Lp̤ez's ambition-and when Lp̤ez was killed in battle, she buried him in a shallow grave dug with her own hands.