Isabel Allende,Margaret Sayers Peden
Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of ValparaÃ­so, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate JoaquÃ­n Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. JoaquÃ­n takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.,As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in 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. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chien--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive JoaquÃ­n gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom.
Historical,Historical Fiction,Fiction,Historical,Romance,Magical Realism,Novels,Literature,Adult,Adult Fiction,Cultural,Latin American
Daughter of Fortune