In 1875, Juana Manuela Gorriti hurried to finish her new novel, Peregrinaciones de una alma triste, in order to include it in the two-volume collection, Panoramas de la vida, published in 1876, dedicated to the women of Buenos Aires. Peregrinaciones is both the story of a young woman's dramatic liberation and self-discovery, and a critical travelogue of conditions in southern South America. The narrator, Laura, tells a close woman friend about her...