I think I have finished the last book I will read for a while, which makes me kind of sad, but still excited because it means another school year is beginning! Though I always hope I will have time to read for pleasure during the school year, my classes combined with all of the extracurricular activities I am involved in and trying to see friends and family make it pretty difficult!
I just got done reading “Daughter of Fortune,” by Isabel Allende. It is the first of Allende’s novels I have read, but will definitely not be the last. For those of you who are not familiar with Allende, she is a pretty famous Chilean author. Besides “Daugther of Fortune,” she has written seven other works, the most recognized possibly being “House of the Spirits.”
“Daughter of Fortune” is a historical novel about a girl named Eliza Sommers, a Chilean raised by a white brother and sister in Valparaiso, Chile. Her life and how she came to be living with Jeremy and Rose Sommers are a mystery to which she doesn’t have the answers.
When she is 16, she falls in love for the first time. When he runs away to California to discover his fortune in the Gold Rush, she follows. Pregnant at the time, she is hidden in the stow of the ship by the man who will one day be her partner, though she doesn’t know it yet, and where she eventually has a miscarriage and nearly dies. Upon arrival in the United States, she searches for her lover for months and months, months that turn into years.
She finally is reunited with Tao Chi’en, the man who had hidden her on the ship many years ago, and discovers that what she has been looking for has been right beside her all along in the form of her friend.
This is a novel about growing up, and though it is set in a different time and place, one can definitely relate to the choices and decisions one has to make for oneself. To try to figure how what is right for you and what is wrong for you, and what is best for your future, even if it is the more difficult choice, is a hard-learned lesson that everyone, at one point or another, must go through.
In case you didn’t know, I have a passion for all things Hispanic, and literature is quite possibly my favorite thing, Hispanic literature even more so, and Allende is no exception. Her aptitude for description is powerful, and what I found most interesting is the cross-cultural theme weaved throughout the entire novel.
Eliza is a half-Chilean, half-white girl being raised by white people. She falls in love with a Chilean, but eventually settles down and loves a Chinese man. Along her travels searching for her lover, she meets Americans, Mexicans, and Asians. Allende’s descriptions of each race and their interactions–their racial differences, stereotypes and ways of life–are incredible to read not only because they are so detailed, but also because they are simply interesting.
I am looking forward to the next book I will read by Allende, which hopefully is not too far away in my future! And if you have a book that you absolutely love, please tell me…I read everything and always love to put more books on my list.