The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(103)

There were times in telling Evangelina’s story that truth felt stranger than fiction. It was important to me to follow the details of her life as accurately and faithfully as possible, and here there was no need for dramatic embellishment. That said, while I utilized over one hundred sources to research the different aspects of the novel, I used Evangelina’s autobiography as my primary source for her story line, choosing to tell her story as she saw fit. At times, that made for some additional investigation. In order to protect some of the individuals who helped her escape from prison, Evangelina used code names to describe them, so it took some digging through the historical record to match those names with real-life figures. Additionally, so much of Evangelina’s life was sensationalized and shaped to suit the aims of others, that it was challenging to separate between the real Evangelina, the woman who was given the moniker of “the Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba” by the American newspapers, and the woman who was vilified by the Spanish. Even her “autobiography” was written and shaped by others to fit the narrative that had been created in the American press. At times, it is difficult to grasp who the real Evangelina was.

There are also some gaps and inconsistencies in Evangelina’s story. Where I could, I relied upon the words of those involved in her escape from Recogidas—Karl Decker, George Musgrave, and others—to fill in those gaps as well as looking at as many supporting documents as possible to better shape her story. The events of the night Berriz attacked her on the Isle of Pines have been contested since it occurred. At the time, Spanish officials claimed that she lured Berriz to her room so that her friends could capture him. Evangelina vehemently denied this and, reportedly, was given chances at freedom if she recanted her story, which she never did. That said, there are reports that later in life she told a friend—Fitzhugh Lee—that she had Berriz come to her room so that he could be captured by the revolutionaries. However, since this information is secondhand, there is conflicting information from Lee, and this is her story, I wrote the events of that evening as Evangelina described them. Regardless of why Berriz went to her room that night, he was the senior ranking Spanish officer of the Isle of Pines and held the welfare and lives of her and her family in his hands.

Evangelina could be a difficult character to understand. The bold woman who hatched her own plan for how to break herself out of prison and who was prepared to join her father in fighting for Cuba’s future, could often come across as demure and meek in the story written about her life. Since some of the descriptions of her are more consistent with the published articles in the Journal rather than her actions, it seems likely that here, too, the narrative was shaped to garner public opinion and support.

As Grace expresses in the novel, out of necessity Evangelina maintained a facade of playing a caricature of herself for much of her public persona. Her life was largely co-opted by the New York press and shaped for their own purposes, including the moniker of “the Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba,” which I think she really took to be a subversive name that she used to suit her own purposes (especially considering her dislike of them referring to her as a “girl”), playing the role they thrust upon her in order to gain her freedom during a dangerous time in Cuba’s history. In the subsequent years, Evangelina faded from public view, so there aren’t many details available about her life after her brush with fame, other than the fact that she married one of her rescuers in a whirlwind romance—Carlos Carbonell—and that they eventually returned to Cuba after the war and had a daughter together. Carlos Carbonell reportedly sought privacy for himself and Evangelina after their marriage in May 1898, which may partly contribute to the lack of available information about her life after her initial bout of celebrity.

Carlos Carbonell died in 1916 and Evangelina later remarried and had children with her next husband. In her later years, Evangelina reportedly expressed surprise at all of the fuss that was made about her life at the time. Despite her close relationship with her family and obvious love for them, she spoke little about them in her autobiography, and so at times, I had to extrapolate what her feelings would have been. There’s little known about her life—and that of her family—after her period of infamy. Evangelina died in May 1970 in Cuba and was given full military honors.

The Casa de Recogidas was the main women’s correctional facility in Havana until the end of 1898. When Spanish rule ended and construction on a new prison was completed, the Presidio de Mujeres in Guanabacoa replaced it. Located on Compostela Street in Havana, the Casa de Recogidas is now the site of the National Archives of Cuba.

When I began researching The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba, I knew little about the circulation battle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, but I immediately found myself immersed in a larger-than-life world where newspaper magnates chartered yachts and sailed into battle. All of the outlandish behaviors in the book—the showgirls dancing on a yacht in Cuba as war rages on, the spies immersed in newsrooms, the extravagant celebrations, eccentric personalities, and more—are straight from the historical record. The Gilded Age was a time of excess, and there is no better example of that than in the newspaper business during this period. At the same time, it was an era of great insecurity. In my fictional heroine, Grace, modeled after the legendary Nellie Bly and other journalists like her, I was able to immerse myself in this fascinating world.

At the heart of all of the different story threads, I kept coming back to one place: Cuba. The war for independence from Spain is one of the darkest and most heartbreaking times in Cuban history. While there is a range of estimates, approximately one third of Cuba’s population was sent to Spanish reconcentration camps. General Weyler’s reconcentration camps are considered to be the first modern use of concentration camps and resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Cubans.