Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba

Nineteenth-century New Orleans and Paris were towns of magnificent balls, squalid smells, unstable governments and bungling quack doctors. Both cities were home to Micaela Almonester, the Baroness de Pontalba, and both are still home to her legacies: the Parisian Hotel Pontalba, and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. The story of the woman behind these architectural triumphs is Gothic to the core, and Vella, a history professor at Tulane, has woven a spellbinding historical narrative out of painstakingly meticulous research. Born the daughter of a philanthropic Spanish real-estate baron in New Orleans, Micaela Almonester was married at fifteen and shipped off to France to live at the gloomy, moated Chateau Mont-l' veque. Her neurotic, obsessive father-in-law, incensed that Micaela's generous dowry was not greater, subjected her to years of legal and emotional abuse before shooting her four times, then taking his own life. More lawsuits and calumnies followed before the courts finally intervened on Micaela's behalf to restore her money and independence. At last, with two bullets permanently lodged in her chest and two fingers missing, the now middle-aged and epileptic lady came triumphantly into her own as a savvy developer and the power-wielding matriarch of a great family. No one could tell Micaela's gripping tale better than Vella, whose passion for her subject infects every inch of her lively, witty, literate prose. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Aug.)