Conquistadora
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An epic novel of love, discovery, and adventure by the author of the award-winning, bestselling memoir When I Was Puerto Rican. • “Santiago’s storytelling is thrilling.... A triumph.” —The Washington Post
As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de León. And in handsome twin brothers Ramón and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. She marries Ramón, and in 1844, just eighteen, she travels across the ocean to a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited on the island.
Ana faces unrelenting heat, disease and isolation, and the dangers of the untamed countryside even as she…