At the end of "Manuela", author Gregory Kauffman writes that the purpose of his story is drama, not veracity. Drama is well served in this book though I thought that at times it was somewhat exaggerated and requiring quite a stretch of believability as when Manuela's parents meet and conceive their daughter in the midst of the city ruins in the aftermath of the 1797 earthquake. There is a lot of room for speculation in the life of Manuela Sáenz as she made her contemporaries and later, historians so uncomfortable with her ideas, behavior and of course, with her relationship with the Liberator Simón Bolívar, that they tried to erase her name, contributions and existence from the annals of history.
In Gregory Kauffman's novel, Manuela becomes the narrator of her own life as she writes her autobiography during her exile in the Peruvian coastal town of Paita. The first part of the book is dedicated to the years before she met Bolívar. She tells of her childhood when her maternal relatives, the nuns of the Santa Catalina convent and her classmates constantly reminded her of her bastard condition; of her elopement with a royalist officer at 17, and her arranged marriage with English merchant, James Thorne. The second part is about her life with Bolivar, punctuated with separations and loving meetings, with danger, political intrigues and war.
I have to admit that "Manuela" somewhat disappointed me. Kauffman's Manuela is a woman who has never forgotten the isolation and ostracism of being a bastard and the author makes sure that readers do not forget that either because it seemed to me that Manuela makes reference to her being illegitimate in just about every chapter in the first part of the book. Though on the outside, Manuela is street smart and resourceful, inwardly, she is insecure and in need for acceptance. In the hands of the author, this insecurity and neediness become the motivation for Manuela's patriotic activism. Every time Bolivar leaves her, she springs into action for the cause. "Keeping busy" prevents her from falling emotionally apart.
Another reason for my disappointment with the book is that though the author is not aiming at veracity, I expect, at least, that what is considered acceptable as a historical fact should be included in historical fiction too. The author makes up some interesting adventures but glaringly omits Manuela's participation in the battle of Ayacucho, where her actions earned her the rank of colonel. In the book, Kauffman has her return to Lima with Bolivar when in fact, she stayed behind and was present in the battlefield helping wounded soldiers, getting them out of harm's way as described in General Sucre's report. I can only surmise the author omitted this important event in Manuela's life because it did not fit with his fictional portrayal of her. The real Manuela was probably much more her own person than his imaginary one.
There are other details that marred the book for me like the negative portrayal of the church (crazy priests and hateful nuns) without balancing it out with the fact that there were priests who also embraced the patriot cause. Then, there is the first meeting of Manuela and Bolívar, which is different from what she related in her journal (or the one attributed to her, "Diario de Quito"). What's omitted in Kauffman's novel is the Liberator's witty comment on her aim because the crown of laurels had hit him in the chest (and not on the forehead as the author had it), and her stunning Bolívar at the ball when she recited back to him quotes from Plutarch and Tacitus after he had quoted her Horace and Virgil in perfect Latin (which made me doubt Kauffman's portrayal of young Manuela as a juvenile delinquent, constantly running away from the convent and therefore spending more time cleaning/scrubbing floors in punishment than being in the classroom learning Latin).
Kauffman's "Manuela" is worth reading because in spite of omissions and small changes, it gives the "big picture" of the life of this amazing woman. But I would recommend readers to supplement the novel with this compilation of Bolívar's and Manuela's letters and her diaries,
Las mas hermosas cartas de amor entre Manuela y Simon, acompanadas de los diarios de Quito y Paita, asi como de otros documentos (Spanish Edition)
because Simón Bolívar once said that good stories are the ones written by those who took part in the events they relate and after reading their beautiful letters, I wholeheartedly agree with him.
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