The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck

Thank goodness for historical fiction or I never in a million years would have known anything about a revolution in Paraguay in the late 1860's.  OR that Uruguay used to be a part of Brazil known as Banda Oriental.  All the history and political turmoil aside,  this book is really about the relationship between the real cruel and ambitious dictator Franco Solano Lopez and his Irish mistress Ella Lynch.  When they arrive in Paraguay from Europe with their first child in tow, the Catholic Church refuses to marry them.  Four more children and a revolution later, they are still together.  Luck creates a passionate fiction to give a possible life to the real events in this history.  It was good enough to make this a National Book Award Finalist.