La Belle Créole

2015 Internation Latino Book Awards Honorable Mention for Best Biography in English Known for her beauty and angelic voice, Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, la Belle CrÉole, was a Cuban-born star of nineteenth-century Parisian society. She befriended aristocrats and artists alike, including Balzac, Baron de Rothschild, Rossini, and the opera diva La Malibran. A daughter of the creole aristocracy, Mercedes led a tumultuous life, leaving her native Havana as a teenager to join her mother in the hea