When she was only 17, future British novelist and poet Lisa St. Aubin went against her mother's wishes and married Venezuelan aristocrat Jaime Teran, who promised the bookish girl an adventurous life in the exotic foothills of the Andes. The seven difficult, sometimes life-threatening, always physically and emotionally arduous years she spent tending his family's sugar-cane plantation are recalled in her fascinating memoir, The Hacienda. Far from the "terrestrial paradise" of her fantasies, St. Aubin instead found herself isolated in an oppressive climate, estranged from both her dubious husband and la gente, the impoverished and centuries-inbred peasant laborers. Left to her own devices, the child bride barely survived the first year, and then, with increasing strength and perseverance, used her superior education to take over the hacienda and bridge the massive cultural gap. The birth of her daughter, Iseult, further assured her acceptance, but it also increased the threat of her ill-tempered husband and made it dangerous for mother and daughter to eventually escape. Clever and lucidly written, St. Aubin de Teran's book admirably captures the blurring of time on the plantation, where months, even years, of mundane routine are ruptured by disease and violence. If The Hacienda has a flaw, it's in the author's marked detachment from her own life, resulting in a curious lack of introspection, as if she were the plucky heroine in someone else's novel. But in most other respects—whether taken as a riveting coming-of-age tale, an often-absurd fish-out-of-water story, or an acutely observed anthropological study—her memoir is indispensable.