Your book Paula centered on the death of your daughter. In Daughter of Fortune there is a depiction of a woman’s grief at the loss of a daughter she mistakenly believes to be dead. What is it like to write on a subject so close and so painful?
Writing is always healing for me. When my daughter died in 1992 writing kept me relatively sane. Grief was like walking alone in a long dark tunnel and my way of walking was writing every day. Writing a memoir allowed me to unravel the confusion and get over the anger that the unnecessary death of my daughter caused our family. Paula should not have died. She was neglected in a hospital in Madrid.
Like many of your novels, Daughter of Fortune brings history alive. Much of the story takes place in California during the Gold Rush. The lives of your characters are woven into vivid depictions of the events of the time. Do you read a lot of history? Why did you choose the Gold Rush?
In 1987, when I was living in Venezuela, I traveled to the United States on a book tour. In Northern California I met a man, Willie Gordon, who had read one of my books and attended my reading. We fell in love and I moved to California to be with him. A few months later we married and we have been together ever since. When I came to San Francisco I was surprised by the fact that this very cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and diverse city was really very young. It had been founded in 1848 during the Gold Rush. I started reading about that period and realized that it was a perfect subject for a novel. It was a time of adventure, greed, and violence, but also of idealism and courage.
Eliza suffers for the risks she takes in pursuit of love and ultimately doesn’t get the man she thought she wanted. What do you think she does get?
Eliza ran away from the safety of her home in Chile, traveled alone hidden in the hold of a ship where she almost died, and then crisscrossed California for years looking for the man she loved. She did not find him but instead found something more valuable: freedom. She had friends, a full life helping others, and at the end she also had the love of Tao Chi’en, who was a much better man than her first lover Joaquin Andieta.
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Have You Read?
More by Isabel Allende
The following books are also available in Spanish from Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, and can be found at www.harpercollins.com.
THE SUM OF OUR DAYS
In this heartfelt memoir, Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of tragic loss: the death of her daughter, Paula. Recalling the past thirteen years from the daily correspondence she shared with her mother in Chile, Allende bares her soul in a book that is as exuberant and full of life as its author. She recounts the stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her that become a new kind of family.
Throughout, Allende shares her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory. Here, too, are the amazing stories behind Allende’s books, the superstitions that guide her writing process, and her adventurous travels. Ultimately, The Sum of Our Days offers a unique tour of this gifted writer’s inner world and the relationships that have become essential to her life and her work.
Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, The Sum of Our Days is a portrait of a contemporary family, tied together by the love, fierce loyalty, and stubborn determination of a beloved, indomitable matriarch.
INES OF MY SOUL
This magisterial work of historical fiction recounts the astonishing life of Inés Suarez, a daring Spanish conquistadora who toiled to build the nation of Chile—and whose vital role has too often been neglected by history.
It is the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and when Inés’s shiftless husband disappears to the New World, she uses the opportunity to search for him as an excuse to flee her stifling homeland and seek adventure. After a treacherous journey to Peru, she learns of his death in battle. She meets and begins a passionate love affair with a man who seeks only honor and glory: Pedro Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro. Together, Inés and Valdivia will build the new city of Santiago and wage a ruthless war against the indigenous Chileans. The horrific struggle will change them forever, pulling them toward separate destinies.
Inés of My Soul is a work of breathtaking scope, written with the narrative brilliance and passion readers have come to expect from Isabel Allende.
“Riveting. . . . It simply captivates. . . . A colorful and clear-eyed portrait of a woman and a country.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A powerfully evocative narrative. . . .
Allende is at her best here.”
—Newsweek
ZORRO
Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, Diego de la Vega is a child of two worlds. His father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. Diego learns from his maternal grandmother, White Owl, the ways of her tribe, while receiving from his father lessons in cattle branding and the art of fencing. It is here, during Diego’s childhood, filled with mischief and adventure, that he witnesses the brutal injustices dealt Native Americans by European settlers and first feels the inner conflict of his heritage.
At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Barcelona for a European education. In a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule, Diego follows the example of his celebrated fencing master and joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. With this tumultuous period as a backdrop, Diego falls in love, saves the persecuted, and confronts for the first time a great rival who emerges from the world of privilege.
Between California and Barcelona, the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures—duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues—Diego de la Vega, aka Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves.
“Allende’s discreetly subversive talent really shows. . . . You turn the pages, cheering on the masked man.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
PORTRAIT IN SEPIA
As a young girl Aurora del Valle suffered a brutal trauma that shaped her character and erased from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribed the lives of women at that time, but tormented by terrible nightmares. When she finds herself alone at the end of an unhappy love affair, she decides to explore the mystery of her past, to discover what it was, exactly, all those years ago, that had such a devastating effect on her young life. Richly detailed, epic in scope, this engrossing story of the dark power of hidden secrets is intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.
“Rich with color and emotion and packed with intriguing characters.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
APHRODITE: A MEMOIR OF THE SENSES
Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses her storytelling skills brilliantly in Aphrodite to evoke the delights of food and sex. After considerable research and study, she has become an authority on aphrodisiacs, which include everything from food and drink to stories and, of course, love. Readers will find here recipes from Allende’s mother, poems, stories from ancient and foreign literatures, paintings, personal anecdotes, fascinating tidbits on the sensual art of food and its effects on amorous performance, tips on how to attract your mate and revive flagging virility, passages on the effect of smell on libido, a history of alcoholic beverages, and much more.
“Allende turns the joyous preparation and consumption of fine food into an erotic catalyst.”
—New York Times Book Review
THE INFINITE PLA
N
Selling more than 65,000 copies and topping bestseller lists around the world, The Infinite Plan tells the engrossing story of one man’s quest for love and for his soul. Gregory Reeves is the son of Charles, an itinerant preacher. As a boy, Gregory accepts the endless journeying and poverty which is his family’s lot, never questioning the validity of his father’s homespun philosophy of life—the Infinite Plan. But, as manhood approaches, he finds himself possessed by a yearning to escape. Hankering after worldly wealth, he longs to break away from the barrio, the teeming Hispanic ghetto of downtown Los Angeles where his family has finally settled. Gregory’s quest, so different from his father’s, takes him first to law school at Berkeley, next to the killing fields of Vietnam, then into a headlong (and hedonistic) pursuit of the American Dream.
“Spellbinding. . . . Allende has caught the mood of our spiritually troubled times with uncanny precision and insight.”
—Miami Herald
MY INVENTED COUNTRY: A MEMOIR
Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country; a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit; and the politics, religion, myth, and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today. The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle Salvador Allende Gossens on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth an overdue acknowledgment that Allende had indeed left home. My Invented Country, mimicking the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance between past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants and to all of us who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.
“The book gets my undivided attention when it expounds on the relationship of the author to that country of hers, invented, imaginary, fictional, to the story of her family, which is itself invented memory, and to her vocation as a narrator.”
—Los Angeles Times
PAULA: A MEMOIR
With an enchanting blend of magical realism, politics, and romance reminiscent of her classic bestseller The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende presents a soul-baring memoir that seizes the reader like a novel of suspense. Written for her daughter Paula when she became ill and slipped into a coma, Paula is the colorful story of Allende’s life—from her early years in her native Chile, through the turbulent military coup of 1973, to the subsequent dictatorship and her family’s years of exile. In the telling, bizarre ancestors reveal themselves, delightful and bitter childhood memories surface, enthralling anecdotes of youthful years are narrated, and intimate secrets are softly whispered.
In an exorcism of death and a celebration of life, Isabel Allende explores the past, questions the gods, and creates a magical book that carries the reader from tears to laughter, from terror to sensuality to wisdom. In Paula, readers will come to understand that the miraculous world of her novels is the world Isabel Allende inhabits—it is her enchanted reality.
“Spellbinding. . . . In flawlessly rich prose [Allende] shares with us her most intimate feelings.”
—Washington Post Book World
The Jaguar and Eagle Trilogy (for children)
CITY OF THE BEASTS
City of the Beasts is Isabel Allende’s first novel for children—an eco-thriller in which fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold has the chance to take the trip of a lifetime. Parting from his family and ill mother, Alexander joins his fearless grandmother, a magazine reporter for International Geographic, on an expedition to the dangerous, remote world of the Amazon. Their mission, along with the others on their team—including a celebrated anthropologist, a local guide and his young daughter Nadia, and a doctor—is to document the legendary Yeti of the Amazon known as the Beast. Under the dense canopy of the jungle, Alexander is amazed to discover much more than he could have imagined about the hidden worlds of the rain forest. Drawing on the strength of the Jaguar, the totemic animal Alexander finds within himself, and the Eagle, Nadia’s spirit guide, both young people are led by the invisible People of the Mist on a thrilling and unforgettable journey to the ultimate discovery.
“Allende’s writing is so vivid we hear the sounds, see the bright birds, smell and even taste the soft fruit.”
—The Times (London)
KINGDOM OF THE GOLDEN DRAGON
Not many months have passed since teenager Alexander Cold followed his bold grandmother into the heart of the Amazon to uncover its legendary Beast. This time reporter Kate Cold escorts her grandson and his closest friend, Nadia, along with the photographers from International Geographic on a journey to another remote niche of the world, in the Himalayas. The team’s task is to locate its fabled golden dragon, a sacred statue and priceless oracle that can foretell the future of the kingdom.
In their scramble to reach the statue before it is destroyed by the greed of an outsider, Alexander and Nadia must use the transcendent power of their totemic animal spirits—Jaguar and Eagle. With the aid of a sage Buddhist monk, his young royal disciple, and a fierce tribe of Yeti warriors, Alexander and Nadia fight to protect the holy rule of the golden dragon.
“Imagining this utopian land and animating Buddhist beliefs is clearly fun for Allende, and her joy translates onto the page.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
FOREST OF THE PYGMIES
Alexander Cold knows all too well his grandmother Kate is never far from an adventure. When International Geographic commissions her to write an article about the first elephant-led safaris in Africa, they head—with Nadia Santos and the magazine’s photography crew—to the blazing, red plains of Kenya. Days into the tour, a Catholic missionary approaches their camp in search of his companions who have mysteriously disappeared. Kate, Alexander, Nadia, and their team, agreeing to aid the rescue, enlist the help of a local pilot to lead them to the swampy forests of Ngoubé. There they discover a clan of Pygmies who unveil a harsh and surprising world of corruption, slavery, and poaching. Alexander and Nadia, entrusting the magical strengths of Jaguar and Eagle, their totemic animal spirits, launch a spectacular and precarious struggle to restore freedom and return leadership to its rightful hands.
“Captures the romance of exotic travel. . . . Has at least two things Allende’s adult fiction is known for: passion and politics.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
Three Allende titles are available in Spanish only, from Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers: Cuentos de Eva Luna, De Amor y de Sombra, and La Casa de Los Espiritus.
ALSO BY ISABEL ALLENDE
The House of the Spirits
Of Love and Shadows
Eva Luna
The Stories of Eva Luna
The Infinite Plan
Paula
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
Portrait in Sepia
My Invented Country
Zorro
Inés of My Soul
The Sum of Our Days
For Young Adults
City of the Beasts
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
Forest of the Pygmies
PRAISE FOR
DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE
“The Chilean novelist possesses the eyes, ears, mind, heart, and pluck to manufacture generous and feisty fiction. . . . [A] rambunctious picaresque about love and obsession.”
—Miami Herald
“Allende interweaves a densely layered tale of passion with the stuff of history and legend.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Allende details her plot and settings richly.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A fast-pased adventure story.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Allende projects a woman’s point of view with confidence, control, and an expansive definition of romance as a fact of life.”
—Time
“Daughter of Fortune is
full of energy and vivacity. It holds out a promise of happiness.”
—Vogue (Australia)
COPYRIGHT
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by HarperCollins Publishers.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE. Copyright © 1999 by Isabel Allende. English translation copyright © 1999 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2000.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2006.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL MODERN CLASSICS EDITION PUBLISHED 2008.