Author Description

"When Estela moves to Mexico City with her young son in the late 1880s, she wants only to escape the scandals of her town and to be near her lover, a married doctor. By luck or fate, she meets an influential and mysterious woman known as La Senorita, who sees in Estela the perfect combination of naivete and intelligence, individual will and compliance, to suit her purposes. And so Estela finds herself swept into a world of politics and entangled in secret relationships. What starts as lessons to educate poor children grows into a school for prostitutes, and that soon leads to a controversial all-women orchestra, a radical underground newspaper, and an increasingly dangerous movement for social change that foreshadows the Mexican Revolution."--BOOK JACKET.