Gold rush

I’m glad that Isabel Allende has written so many books, because now that I’ve read one, I want more! I just finished “Daughter of Fortune,” which is the story of Eliza Sommers, abandoned at birth and adopted by an English family in Valparaiso, Chile. Raised by the spinster (that term always cracks me up) Miss Rose, Eliza falls in love with an unsuitable young Chilean. They have a torrid love affair, but he abandons her to pursue his dreams of finding gold in California. Eliza, in turn, pursues him to California, disguised as a boy.

I loved Allende’s descriptions of life in 1840s Chile, California, and China (seen through the eyes of Eliza’s friend Tao Chi’en). Gold rush-era San Francisco was full of not only people who came to find gold, but those who found their fortunes in other ways (including prostitution, the occupation of several characters in this book). If Allende’s setting is historically accurate, it was also a fairly brutal place, with constant friction between the different groups of immigrants who settled there.

I also liked the character of Eliza, who went to California to find her lover but ended up finding something much more important—her own sense of who she was, and a new life away from the restrictive society in which she was raised. Secondary characters in the story were also developed in rich detail. (I think some of them appear in Allende’s other novels.)

The only complaint I have is that the story ended rather abruptly, as though the author lost interest in tying everything together, but I was enthralled through the rest of the story. This book has been on my shelf for a while and I finally picked it up on the recommendation of Mimi37 (thanks M!). It wasn’t on my original list for the Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge, but it definitely qualifies as armchair travel so I’m going to count it anyway :)