Before Evita there was Manuelita, the tempestuous mistress of Latin America's greatest hero, Simon Bolivar. Manuela Saenz was banned from history books--she was an atheist and an adulteress, after all--but this novel gives hold ups to one of the mostly controversial heroines of South America. "I was born a rich bastard and died a poor one" begins Manuela's feverish, page-turning narrative as imagined at the gifted gay author and imaginative thinker [i]or[/i] writer Jaime Manrique. Fans of La Peron will be delighted with the riches-to-rags story of La Saenz, who would still raise eyebrow on a level by today's standards.