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From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende, comes a passionate tale of one young woman's quest to save her lover set against the chaos of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, 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 Joaquín 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. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.
As Eliza embarks on her perilous journey north in the hold of a ship and arrives in the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco, she must navigate a society dominated by greedy men. But Eliza soon catches on with the help of her natural spirit and a good friend, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. What began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom.
A marvel of storytelling, Daughter of Fortune confirms once again Isabel Allende's extraordinary gift for fiction and her place as one of the world's leading writers… (more)
So not one of my favorite books. I suppose it is probably the style of writing. It is more of what the character 'did' instead of what she felt and what she was thinking. The story was a bit intriguing, but I am glad that I did read it. ( )
Isabel Allendes neuer Roman erzählt von verschiedenen Ländern und Kulturen: England, Chile, Kalifornien und China sind die Hauptstationen der Geschichte. Meist jedoch erfährt der Leser nur wenig wirklich Neues: In China werden kleinen Mädchen die Füße verbunden, damit sie nicht weiter wachsen, in Chile versuchen europäische Missionare erfolglos, die Indiobevölkerung zu missionieren, und in Kalifornien herrscht wilde Goldgräberstimmung.
Everyone is born with some special talent, and Eliza Sommers discovered early on that she had two: a good sense of smell and a good memory.
--First Perennial edition, 2000
Quotations
It is what you do in this world that matters, not how you come into it.
The things we forget may as well never have happened, but she had many memories, both real and illusory, and that was like living twice.
He had only a vague idea of her size and of a dark aureole of hair, but it would not be until their second meeting a few days later that he would sink into the perdition of her black eyes and the watery grace of her gestures.
Eliza's legs were trembling; she hadn't used them in two months, and she felt as landsick as she had before at sea, but the man's clothing gave her an unfamiliar freedom; she had never felt so invisible.
"They look for gold, and along the way lose their souls," Captain Katz had repeated tirelessly in the brief religious services he imposed every Sunday on the passengers and crew of the Emilia, but no one paid any attention, blinded by dreams of the sudden riches that would change their lives.
Property was much more valuable than life; any robbery over a hundred dollars was paid for on the gallows.
How old was he? She had asked him once, and he replied that counting all his reincarnations he had to be between seven and eight thousand years old.
Extracting bullets and treating knife wounds were routine procedures, and Eliza lost her horror of blood and learned to stitch human flesh as calmly as formerly she had embroidered sheets for her trousseau.
Tao Chi'en charged very little, but always in advance, because in his experience a frightened man pays without argument, while one who is cured wants to bargain.
"People come from the most remote shores; you hear a hundred languages in the street, smell the food of five continents, see every race," she wrote.
"You cannot wait for that man forever, Eliza. It is a form of madness, like gold fever. You must set a deadline," Tao said one day.
"Nothing is in vain. You don't go anywhere in life, Eliza, you just keep walking."
Last words
-Ya estoy libre...-replicó ella sin soltarle la mano.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende, comes a passionate tale of one young woman's quest to save her lover set against the chaos of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, 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 Joaquín 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. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.
As Eliza embarks on her perilous journey north in the hold of a ship and arrives in the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco, she must navigate a society dominated by greedy men. But Eliza soon catches on with the help of her natural spirit and a good friend, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. What began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom.
A marvel of storytelling, Daughter of Fortune confirms once again Isabel Allende's extraordinary gift for fiction and her place as one of the world's leading writers
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