Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte

Ambitious, tenacious, calculating, and intent on building a family empire—teenaged Betsy Patterson shared these traits with her brother-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte, even as he disavowed her marriage to his underage younger brother, Jerome, and left her with an uncertain marital status as well as a young son who resembled the French emperor. With an easy, empathetic style, Berkin (Revolutionary Mothers) follows Betsy from her frivolous youth in post-colonial Baltimore through her devolution from a sparkling ingénue to a popular and witty European party guest into lonely spinsterhood, eschewing romantic love or compassion as she continued to sue her erstwhile in-laws decades after her brief marriage ended. Financially secure due to her own shrewd investments in stocks and real estate, she desperately sought to return first her son, and then grandson, to the heights of European nobility, regardless of their own wishes. In this engaging, quick-reading account, Betsy’s little-remembered story exposes tensions between the Bonapartes while also revealing the fragility of her native country as her predicament briefly threatened diplomatic incidents in three countries while upsetting moral and patriotic purists in the process. (Feb.)