Our Lives Are the Rivers

by Jaime Manrique

  A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

  1783

  Simón Bolívar is born in Caracas, Venezuela.

  1797

  Manuela Sáenz is born in Quito, Ecuador.

  1801

  Simón Bolívar, age eighteen, travels to Spain to study.

  1802

  Bolívar marries María Teresa del Toro, who dies, eight months later, of yellow fever.

  1808

  Ferdinand VII, king of Spain, is deposed by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, is crowned king of Spain.

  1811

  Bolívar begins his military campaigns for independence in Venezuela.

  1815

  The Spanish government in Venezuela exiles Bolívar to Jamaica.

  1815

  Manuela Sáenz, while a student at the school of the Concepta nuns in Quito, elopes with Lieutenant Fausto D’Elhuyar. Shortly afterward she returns to her father’s house in humiliation.

  1817

  Manuela marries James Thorne, an Englishman, in Lima.

  1819

  Colombia achieves its independence in the Battle of Boyacá. Bolívar creates the Republic of Gran Colombia.

  1821

  The Argentine general José de San Martín liberates Lima.

  1822

  Manuela Sáenz is made a Knight of the Order of the Sun for her efforts on behalf of Peruvian Independence.

  1822

  Manuela Sáenz meets Bolívar in Quito, and they become lovers.

  1823–27

  Manuela and Bolívar live openly as a couple in Lima.

  1827

  Bolívar leaves for Bogotá and Manuela stays behind in Lima. There is a coup against the general; Manuela is arrested and exiled from Peru.

  1828

  Manuela Sáenz arrives in Santa Fe de Bogotá and joins Bolívar at La Quinta. In September, Manuela thwarts an attempt on Bolívar’s life.

  1830

  Bolívar is exiled from Colombia and dies in San Pedro Alejandrino, a plantation on the outskirts of Santa Marta.

  1834

  Manuela Sáenz is exiled for life from Colombia. She goes to Jamaica.

  1835

  Manuela Sáenz settles in Paita, Peru, after the Ecuadorian government denies her permission to return to Quito.

  1847

  James Thorne is assassinated by unknown assailants.

  1856

  Manuela Sáenz dies of an epidemic that ravages Paita. Her house and its contents are burned. Manuela Sáenz is buried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Paita.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN APPRECIATION OF THEIR SUPPORT I would like to thank the MacDowell Colony, the Medway Writers’ Retreat, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Performance of the Contemporary Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

  About the Author

  JAIME MANRIQUE is the award-winning author of the memoir Eminent Maricones, and the novels Latin Moon in Manhattan, Twilight at the Equator, and Colombian Gold. A contributor to Salon.com, BOMB, and other publications, he lives in New York City and is an associate professor in the MFA program at Columbia University.

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  Praise for

  Our Lives Are the Rivers

  “A compelling story that melds history and biography into the context of a passionate love affair, Our Lives Are the Rivers is a masterful piece of historical fiction.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A vivid portrait of a South American heroine…Our Lives Are the Rivers views history through the eyes of one of South America’s biggest heroines.”

  —Boston Globe

  “While reading Our Lives are the Rivers I was beautifully and completely transported to another time and place, which is a gift that only the best novels can give a reader. Page-turner, work of art, love-story, historical novel—Jaime Manrique has done it all in this magnificent and stunning book.”

  —Jonathan Ames,

  author of Wake Up, Sir!

  “The love affair between Manuela Sáenz, a respectable married woman, and Simón Bolívar, Latin America’s greatest hero, is brought vividly to life in Jaime Manrique’s radiant new novel. Told through Manuela’s voice and those of her two slaves, Natán and Jonotás, Our Lives Are the Rivers illuminates a momentous phase in the liberation of colonial South America.”

  —John Ashbery,

  Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Where Shall I Wander

  “Our Lives are the Rivers is Jaime Manrique’s deliciously romantic epic tale of an important moment in the history of the Americas. At the center of it all is the beautiful, passionate, complex, and controversial Manuela Sáenz, Simón Bolívar’s long-time mistress and devoted ally. Manrique has created a vivid and captivating portrait of a reckless, intelligent, and endlessly fascinating woman who defied societal conventions and risked her own life in the name of great, burning love, glory and revolution.”

  —Jessica Hagedorn,

  author of Dogeaters and Dream Jungle

  “Would you like to read a novel based on true events about a woman who was a beautiful spy, an indomitable soldier, a fiery lover? Would you like this novel to have the brillo of an opera and the intrigue of a telenovela, but, at the same time, be underscored by the subtler counterpoints of mystery and memory? Then don’t miss reading Our Lives Are the Rivers by Jaime Manrique.”

  —Laura Restrepo,

  author of The Dark Bride and Isle of Passion

  “One will be swept away by the tale of this extraordinary heroine and by Jaime Manrique’s limpid, poetic, cinematic prose. By making mythic historical figures seem intimately human and alive Manrique shows he is a real magician, beckoning his dreaming reader across an enchanted land. Our Lives Are the Rivers is destined to find many enthusiastic fans.”

  —Kennedy Fraser,

  author of Ornament & Silence: Essays on Women’s Lives

  “Jaime Manrique has written a lyrical, meticulously researched evocation of Manuela Sáenz, a towering yet enigmatic figure in the history of Latin America. Her passionate devotion to the cause of freedom and independence, and her even more passionate devotion to the ‘Liberator,’ Simón Bolívar, is a tale almost too romantic, too exalted, and too tragic to be true. Even her exile on the coast of Peru, as grim and bleak as it was, was relieved by visits from Giuseppe Garibaldi (on his way back to Italy) and Herman Melville (during a whaling voyage). Manrique has done full justice to the intrepid heroism and courage of mind of this unforgettable woman.”

  —Edith Grossman,

  award-winning translator of Don Quixote

  “This juicy, deliciously involving tale, a masterful fusion of fact and fantasy, is everything we look for in historical fiction. The novel ultimately a moving evocation of compelling characters, for whom personal hunger and political destiny are one.”

  —Phillip Lopate,

  author of The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present

  “Like most great novelists, Manrique has two goals—to tell the story of real people whose experience and struggles are timeless and universal, and at the same time to reveal the history and configuration of the world about them in time and place. By both measures, Our Lives Are the Rivers—a line from unrelated poet Jorge Manrique’s epic poem about the death of his father—is a success.”

  —Gay City News

  “Manrique adeptly chronicles Sáenz’s uniquely independent life and inimitable contributions to South America’s independence from Spain as well as her intense love affair with revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar.”

  —Library Journal

  “An epic page-turner that swells with ecstatic love and righteous anger, Manrique’s latest skillfully recreates an inspired pair, and their times.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  also by

  JAIME MANRIQUE

  NONFICTION

  Emi
nent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me

  FICTION

  Latin Moon in Manhattan

  Twilight at the Equator

  Colombian Gold

  POETRY

  My Night with Federico García Lorca

  Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus

  Copyright

  OUR LIVES ARE THE RIVERS. Copyright © 2006 by Jaime Manrique. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061984693

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