Eliza Lynch: queen of the Paraguayan social scene at the side of Francisco Solano Lopez

Surely somewhere there is a film producer licking his lips at the prospect of putting Eliza Lynch's story on the big screen. But then, from the moment she buried her lover/tin-pot dictator and their son with her bare hands at the end of a war that killed about two-thirds of a country's population, her story was aching to be told.


The fact that the country in question is Paraguay and the war took place 140 years ago explains why most Irish people are unfamiliar with her name and her life. But The Lives of Eliza Lynch goes a long way to definitively mapping out the twists and turns that saw a girl born in pre-Famine-era Cork become one of the most notorious people in South America.


The problem with Lynch's story up to now has been its lack of clarity. Whether through patchy biographies or novels based on her life like 2003's The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright, rumour and innuendo have taken on the façade of truth. Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning, however, have gone to great lengths to stick to the facts, an approach which serves them well as Lynch's life hardly needs to be embellished.


The broad arc of her story goes something like this. Born in Charleville to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in 1833, the family moved to France where, aged 16, Eliza married a French army doctor more than twice her age. The couple moved to Algeria but, realising that her lot was little more than that of a sex slave, she returned to France.


Meanwhile, the son of the dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez, was on a diplomatic trip to Europe which doubled as something of a carousing holiday for himself and his entourage. He and Lynch met, possibly through connections in Parisian courtesan circles where ladies 'entertained' high-class gentlemen in the hope of finding a wealthy suitor. The pair hit it off and by the age of 21, Lynch was on a ship to South America pregnant with their first child.


It was only then that her life got really interesting. She arrived in Paraguay's capital Asuncion with a child in tow and her supposed links to a less than prim and proper lifestyle in Paris saw her blacklisted by Lopez's family and the country's elite. But Lynch threw herself into things with Lopez as her benefactor and became the queen of the local social scene.


Of course, what made her life truly less ordinary was the tragedy which struck it. Lopez took power and, amid delusions of building an empire, led his country into a war against the might of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. What became known as the War of the Triple Alliance ripped his country's population and territory to shreds. All the while Lynch was painted by her enemies as the villain whose whispering ambitions drove her lover and the country further into the abyss; a charge which the authors find stands on rocky foundations.


Death was, it seems, inevitable and the image of Lynch burying Lopez and her then 15-year-old son after they were killed by Brazilian troops in one final standoff has taken on mythic proportions. From there her British passport saved her life and she returned to Europe where she lived in relative obscurity before dying in Paris in 1886.


History, particularly the South American kind, is written by the victors and Lillis and Fanning have done a good job to sift through the half-truths and revisions that make Eliza Lynch's story something of a rollercoaster ride. Written in an accessible, no-nonsense style, it's refreshing to read a book on Lynch that refuses to pander to gossip. Her life has enough colour as it is.


The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage By Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning, Gill and Macmillan, €24.99, 250pps