Daughter of Fortune
 Isabel Allende
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 1999 HarperCollins
 ISBN: 006019491X

In the 1840s, orphaned Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile, & sets sail for the California Gold Rush.

Eliza is left as an infant on Miss Rose Sommer's doorstep. This Victorian spinster who runs her brother's house in the fabled port city, has her own passionate past & well-hidden secrets. She realizes that this infant will likely be the only child she'll ever have, & decides to raise her in the proper English way, with Mama Fresia, Miss Rose's longtime Indian servant, as nanny & nurse.

& so Eliza grows to womanhood, willingly accepting Miss Rose's propriety, fascinated by the people who gravitate to Miss Rose's Wednesday evening salons. Eliza also inculcates Mama Fresia's earthy healing powers & energetic superstitions.

When gold is discovered in California, Chileans of every stripe become infected with the fever, either heading north to seek their fortunes or supplying the ships & materials for the gold diggers who come around Cape Horn in the sailing ships.

At sixteen, Eliza falls in love for the first time. Joaquin Andieta is a lowly clerk working for her benefactor's brother. He seethes with political resentments about wealth & class, & while the lovers consummate their passion, Joaquin also stirs Eliza's social conscience. Then comes the dread day when the young clerk decides to seek his fortune in the gold fields, steals from his employer & disappears, leaving Eliza bereft & in trouble.

What will this headstrong young woman do now? What are the secrets that Miss Rose hides? Why does Eliza go in search of her lover? Who will she meet along the way?

Isabel Allende has written an epic & enthralling adventure, populated with a cast of memorable & amusing characters: Jacob Todd, itinerant Bible seller mistaken for a pastor who reinvents himself as a journalist; Karl Bretzner, a Viennese opera singer who meant much to the young, ardent Rose Sommer; Uncle John, sea captain of the family's fortunes with a lady in every port; Paulina de Santa Cruz, a canny Chilean business woman with her own turbulent past; Tao Ch'en, a physician from the Orient with his gold acupuncture needles & a broken heart; Babalu, the Bad, a giant clothed in wolfskins, & Joe Bonecrusher with her big heart & bevy of pretty girls traipsing through Gold Rush country.

Set against the magnificent landscapes of Chile & California, Isabel Allende tells the tale of two countries where the old ways & the new collide, mingle & give birth to entirely original citizens & stories.

Daughter of Fortune is a wonderful read, reminiscent of early R. F. Delderfield sagas. It is rich in the details of social life & history during an extra-ordinary era, when the great sailing ships plied across the oceans, people traveled far & wide making alliances that back home would never have been permitted, re-making their lives & creating communities out of the raw wilderness.

Isabel Allende, ably translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, has written a bold tapestry & woven history & fiction into a spellbinding story of an intelligent, brave & interesting woman.

More from Isabel Allende:
Portrait in Sepia
The House of the Spirits
Of Love and Shadows
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile
The Stories of Eva Luna
The Infinite Plan
Paula
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses.
(08/03/03)

Rebecca