Born in1894, youngest daughter of a wealthy Peruvian landowner, Lola was seduced at an early age, disowned and forced to leave her father’s plantation. Twice widowed with three children by age 21, Lola braved a British blockade and German U-boats off the coast of South America in her quest for security and happiness. Lola lived a life of drama and hardship from the Andes to San Francisco, but she never gave up and she never stopped loving. Fear of impending death often impels people to divulge secrets they have guarded for many years. Thus it was that Lola, sick and frightened, confided the story of her youth to her daughter, my mother, who at age 95, passed the story on to me as I sat by her hospital bed for two days. The story had many gaps, all of which I filled with fiction.