A daring young woman and groundbreaking reporter journeys from San Francisco to Chile in the 1890s to investigate a civil war and her own roots in this historical novel.
Allende offers readers a deeply researched historical adventure, excavating both romantic and journalistic exploits with verve and passion. But it is the story’s prescient alignment with our current cultural and civic upheaval that lands like a mortar from Allende’s epic depiction of the Battle of Concón ... Essential ... If history and a free press illuminate a revolution’s explosion of civil norms, literature reveals the human triumph, vanity and tragedy of revolution’s impact.
It’s a story likely to be appreciated by the legions of Allende fans who have ensured she’s considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author ... Reading the book, you can almost see young Emilia on the steamboat headed south to Chile, the land at the foot of the volcanos that holds her roots, and her destiny.
Emilia's story is exciting, empowering, and inherently feminist ... As she has in previous acclaimed novels, Allende...applies riveting storytelling to an exploration of history through the lens of a fictional heroine. Allende's language, and Frances Riddle's translation, is evocative in its descriptions of Chile's lovely landscapes, a young woman's complicated love for her family, and the horrors of the battlefield ... This enthralling novel leaves Emilia, still young, in a position of some uncertainty: readers may hope for more from this plucky protagonist in a possible sequel.
