Daughter of Fortune - Hardcover

Allende, Isabel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002259753 ISBN 13: 9780002259750

Publisher: Flamingo, 1999

Synopsis

The international No.1 bestselling novelist returns to her best form with this magnificent sweeping tale.

Isabel Allende’s best novel since The House of the Spirits.

Set in Anglophile Chile and goldrush California during the middle years of the nineteenth century, this magnificent romance tells the story of English foundling Eliza Sommers who grows up in the bustling entrepot of Valparaiso. Eliza is a spirited, sparky and ambitious romantic who becomes embroiled in a forbidden love affair with the charismatic but capricious Joaquin Andieta. When he disappears suddenly for California, and the promise of riches that rumours of gold strikes have brought him, she can but follow after him…

About this title

About the Author

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of nine novels, including Inès of My Soul,Daughter of Fortune, and Portrait in Sepia. She has also written a collection of stories, four memoirs, and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Isabel Allende lives in California.

From the Back Cover

'Eliza's birth was a forbidden subject. According to Miss Rose, the basket they found was woven of the finest wicker and lined in batiste; Eliza's nightgown was worked with French knots and the sheets edged with lace, and topping everything was a lace coverlet, an extravagance never seen in Chile. Over time, other details were added: six gold coins tied up in a silk handkerchief and a note explaining that the baby, though illegitimate, was of good stock. Closer to Eliza's memories was Mama |Freisa's explanation: when she opened the door one morning, she had simply found a naked baby girl in a crate . . . '

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparasio, Chile, by a well-intentioned Victorian spinster, Miss Rose, and her brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the highly unsuitable Joaquin Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of Northern California. By 1849, Chileans everywhere have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquin takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

So begins Isabel Allende's enchanting new novel, 'Daughter of Fortune, ' her most ambitious work of fiction yet. As we follow her spirited heroine through a perilous journey north of the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. With the help of her good friend and saviour, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en, Eliza manages to survive in a society full of men and prostitutes, and slowly but surely, California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive Joaquin gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms over time, and what begins as a search for love ends up as the conquest for personal freedom. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is.

'Daughter of Fortune' is a sweeping portrait of an era, a story rich in character, history, violence and compassion. In Eliza, Allende has created one of her most appealing heroines, an adventurous, independent-minded and highly unconventional young woman who has the courage to reinvent herself and to create her own destiny in a new country. A marvel of storytelling, 'Daughter of Fortune' confirms once again Isabel Allende's extraordinary gift for fiction and place as one of the world's leading writers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002259753
• ISBN 13: 9780002259750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 399