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Until Isabel Allende burst onto the scene with her 1985 debut, The House of
the Spirits, Latin American fiction was, for the most part, a boys' club
comprising such heavy hitters as Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Mario Vargas Llosa. But the Chilean Allende shouldered her way in with her
magical realist multi-generational tale of the Trueba family, followed it up
with four more novels and a spate of nonfiction, and has remained in a place of
honor ever since. Her sixth work of fiction, Daughter of Fortune, shares
some characteristics with her earlier works: the canvas is wide, the characters
are multi-generational and multi-ethnic, and the protagonist is an
unconventional woman who overcomes enormous obstacles to make her way in the
world. Yet one cannot accuse Allende of telling the same story twice; set in the
mid-1800s, this novel follows the fortunes of Eliza Sommers, Chilean by birth
but adopted by a British spinster, Rose Sommers, and her bachelor brother,
Jeremy, after she is abandoned on their doorstep.
"You have English blood, like us," Miss Rose assured Eliza when she
was old enough to understand. "Only someone from the British colony would have
thought to leave you in a basket on the doorstep of the British Import and
Export Company, Limited. I am sure they knew how good-hearted my brother Jeremy
is, and felt sure he would take you in. In those days I was longing to have a
child, and you fell into my arms, sent by God to be brought up in the solid
principles of the Protestant faith and the English language." The
family servant, Mama Fresia, has a different point of view, however: "You,
English? Don't get any ideas, child. You have Indian hair, like mine." And
certainly Eliza's almost mystical ability to recall all the events of her life
would seem to stem more from the Indian than the Protestant side.
As Eliza grows up, she becomes less tractable, and when she falls in love
with Joachin Andieta, a clerk in Jeremy's firm, her adoptive family is
horrified. They are even more so when a now-pregnant Eliza follows her lover to
California where he has gone to make his fortune in the 1849 gold rush. Along
the way Eliza meets Tao Chi'en, a Chinese doctor who saves her life and becomes
her closest friend. What starts out as a search for a lost love becomes, over
time, the discovery of self; and by the time Eliza finally catches up with the
elusive Joachin, she is no longer sure she still wants what she once wished for.
Allende peoples her novel with a host of colorful secondary characters. She even
takes the narrative as far afield as China, providing an intimate portrait of
Tao Chi'en's past before returning to 19th-century San Francisco, where he and
Eliza eventually fetch up. Readers with a taste for the epic, the picaresque,
and romance that is satisfyingly complex will find them all in Daughter of
Fortune. --Margaret Prior |
