Two teen vigilantes set off on an action-packed investigation to expose corruption and deliver justice in Valiant Ladies, Melissa Grey's YA historical fiction novel inspired by real seventeenth-century Latinx teenagers known as the Valiant Ladies of Potosí.
By day, Eustaquia “Kiki” de Sonza and Ana Lezama de Urinza are proper seventeenth-century young ladies. But when night falls, they trade in their silks and lace for swords and muskets, venturing out into the vibrant, bustling, crime ridden streets of Potosí, in the Spanish Empire’s Viceroyalty of Peru.
They pass their time fighting, gambling, and falling desperately in love with each other.
Then, on the night Kiki’s engagement to the viceroy’s son is announced, her older brother—heir to her family’s fortune—is murdered. The girls immediately embark on a whirlwind investigation that takes them from the lowliest brothels of Potosí to the highest echelons of the Spanish aristocracy.