Dona Leopoldina: The Habsburg Empress of Brazil By Gloria Kaiser, Translation and Afterword by Lowell A. Bangerter

Leopoldine, born in 1797, was the great-granddaughter of empress Maria Theresa and a daughter of the Austrian emperor Francis I. Under Metternich's instructions she was married in absentia to Pedro of Braganca, successor to the throne of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve when she was twenty years old. She joined her unknown husband in Brazil where she died ten years later mentally exhausted and emotionally abused. Four of her children survived into adulthood; the only surviving son, Pedro II, became emperor of Brazil. Despite her relatively brief period of living in Brazil, she left a legacy of accomplishments and good will that remain and are remembered to this day.
In this historical novel Gloria Kaiser uses numerous excerpts from letters Leopoldine wrote to her father and to other family members to convey a sense of personal authenticity. These excerpts allow Kaiser to present Leopoldine as a historic personality in a specific environmental condition at a precise moment in the history and politics of the emerging Brazil, while at the same time showing great empathy with her heroine as a woman whose life, problems, and way of coping have relevance even today.