The Eye of the Lion by Lael Tucker Wertenbaker (1964)

The Eye of the Lion
by Lael Tucker Wertenbaker
Publisher:  Little, Brown and Company
Copyright:  1964
Book Club Edition

A novel based on the life of Mata Hari.

Of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle McLeod -- Mata Hari -- three facts are known and not disputed:  she was born, she danced, she died.  Otherwise truth is obscured by fancy to make her heroine of a twentieth century legend, her name accepted as a synonym for the glamorous spy and femme fatale.  Today it takes a skilled novelist with a deep knowledge of the times to recreate Mata Hari and justify her elusive immortality.  Lael Tucker Wertenbaker gives back her reality and human meaning.  To weave the threads of passion, betrayal, obloquy and terror into a full-bodied, sweeping story, compassionately told and tragic, she uses three narrators.  The first, Gerschy Zelle, was born in Leeuwarden, Holland, and grows up there.  She might have been as prosy as her neighbors, but fate involves the artless girl in drama, high doom and often savage farce.  The second narrator is Louis Lasbogue, Parisian dilettante, fascinated by Gerschy, whose radiance has survived all that life has done to her.  Together they create Mata Hari, who dances to the Hindu god of war, delighting audiences in Paris, Monte Carlo, Vienna and Berlin.  Franz van Weel, the third narrator, is a Dutch officer and diplomat who entangles Mata Hari in a web of intrigue.  The insouciant years end in the inferno of the great war and she is its victim.  Louis and Franz must stand by as witnesses on October 15, 1917, when Mata Hari, their "creation," is shot at dawn.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover is discolored and shows rubbed edges and tears in the edges.  Spine is discolored by the sun.  Pages are tanned and darkening by age.  Previous owner's name and date is written on front endpaper.  Spine of dust cover has a tear in the bottom edge.

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