This extraordinary memoir by Concha Lombardo de Miramón is the only known autobiography written by a nineteenth-century Mexican woman. In it she recounts her life from her birth in Mexico City to the beginning of her long European exile following her husband's execution for supporting Maximilian, the ill-fated Austrian prince who established an empire in Mexico. Now available for the first time in English, translated and edited by Silvia Marina Arrom, it offers rich insight into Mexico's past from a female perspective. Concha provides not only eyewitness accounts of Mexico's bitter civil wars and leading political figures, but also lively anecdotes of daily life that both confirm and question stereotypes about women and gender. Readers will enjoy, and relate to, her accounts of family secrets, childhood mischief, possessive boyfriends, marital spats, practical jokes, daring escapades, and, finally, a love story that ends in tragedy.