Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World by Catalina de Erauso

With a title like that, how could you not pick up this book? Dr. Herrera at FSU gave me this memoir as a "door prize" for coming all the way to Tallahassee. Catalina's story is intriguing for many reasons. She escapes a convent, goes to the New World, kills her brother, and meets the pope all in the early seventeenth century, a time when women NEVER did such things. The modern translation is good, but the colloquial English can be a bit distracting.