The Shadows of Elisa Lynch: How a Nineteenth-century Irish Courtesan Became the Most Powerful Woman in Paraguay - Hardcover

This historical recovery meticulously follows a life lived in the ambit of arbitrary power, revealing the compromises of survival along the way... As in her acclaimed first book THE FLOATING BROTHEL, Rees is concerned with history as a collective narrative. This book is vivid with sensual and visceral experience. Rees is as adept at recalling the snatches of a popular song that carried people through a siege as she is at describing wounded soldiers begging for amputation for fear of gangrene. She can pin down human motivation in a line; as when she summarises the General's relationship to his father as "where cowardice met discretion" (Rachel Holmes, BBC History)

Rees's strength as a writer lies, as it did in her earlier book, The Floating Brothel, in her astonishing eye for physical detail and her vivid and evocative reconstructing of physical suffering. Her account of the war, which takes up the bulk of her narrative, is painstakingly realised and brilliantly dramatised (Guardian)

scholarly (Irish Independent)

THE SHADOWS OF ELISA LYNCH is subtly written, stocked with vivid descriptions of wildlife and landscape and arresting... Rees is a determined researcher; consulting primary sourses in Spanish and French, and she conveys the subtleties of South American politics, such as they were. Crucially, she displays more sympathy for her subject (Independent magazine)

The story [Rees] tells is bloody, complicated and dark... Rees writes with confidence, and has a neat turn of phrase... The tales of Elisa Lynch is worth telling (Sunday Telegraph)

An absorbing account of a fascinating true story. Rees... is particularly good at assessing Lynch's historical impact (Belfast Telegraph)

Rees provides a coherent and stirring account of a chaotic time (The List)

Thoroughly researched and [Rees] tells her story scrupulously, with an eye for memorable detail (TLS)