Our Lady of the Night: A Novel

by Mayra Santos-Febres

Overview

From internationally-acclaimed novelist Mayra Santos-Febres comes a carnal, epic novel about the life of Isabel “La Negra” Luberza—a legendary Puerto Rican madam who, by the end of World War II, became the most powerful woman on the island.

Born into poverty and then abandoned by her mother, Isabel "La Negra" Luberza blossoms into a supremely sensual young woman. Obsessed with attaining aristocratic status—armed with incredible physical presence, indomitable ambition, and keen intelligence—she meets Fernando Fornarís, the man who will forever change her life. With a parcel of land given to her by her rich, white married lover, Isabel transforms herself into a hard-edged and merciless businesswoman—abandoning her own newborn son to become Puerto Rico's most feared and respected madam, a collector of society's secrets, a queen of the notorious brothel that emerges as the island's true political and economic heart.

Set against the rich backdrop of the Caribbean and the United States during the tumultuous years of World War II, Mayra Santos-Febres's Our Lady of the Night is a breathtaking novel of passion, power, and the devastating price of achieving everything one wishes for.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061731303
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/11/2009
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,105,977
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mayra Santos-Febres has won many prizes for her stories and was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and long-listed for the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Puerto Rico.

Mayra Santos-Febres es poeta, narradora y critica. Sus novelas incluyen Sirena Selena vestida de pena, finalista del Premio Rómulo Gallegos 2001, y Cualquier miércoles soy tuya. Nuestra Señora de la Noche, finalista del X Premio Primavera, es su tercera novela. Actualmente es catedrática y dirige el taller de narrativa de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Editorial Reviews

Each of her sultry novels pierces through your flesh and bone and beats to the rhythm of your body. Mayra is an explosion of life on each page.” — Arturo Pérez-Reverte

“A complicated look into the notorious woman’s struggle for a liberated and independent life, the book takes a boldly feminist stance that, thankfully, is not a woeful account of maternal guilt…Isabel remains, to her tragic end, a marvelously constructed character.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Each of her sultry novels pierces through your flesh and bone and beats to the rhythm of your body. Mayra is an explosion of life on each page.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Each of her sultry novels pierces through your flesh and bone and beats to the rhythm of your body. Mayra is an explosion of life on each page.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Set in the early- to mid-20th century, the latest from Santos-Febres (Sirena Selena) brings to life the story of Isabel “La Negra” Luberza Oppenheimer, Puerto Rico's most infamous madam and owner of Elizabeth's Dancing Place. The daughter of a migrant worker, Isabel is abandoned as a baby and raised by a kindly godmother until her early teenage years, when she is sent to work as a servant for a local aristocratic family. Later, she becomes entangled with prominent bachelor Fernando Fornarís, and things heat up: a pregnancy, her foray into selling black market booze and an expansion into becoming “not a madam, an emancipated woman” at a very steep cost. A complicated look into the notorious woman's struggle for a liberated and independent life, the book takes a boldly feminist stance that, thankfully, is not a woeful account of maternal guilt. The style can be heavy-handed, but Isabel remains, to her tragic end, a marvelously constructed character. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly