Review by Booklist Review
Allende has created many addictive sagas about the extended del Valle family and their intersections with history and one another. The eponymous Emilia, Allende's addition to this notable clan, is one adventurous, gutsy woman. The illegitimate daughter of a Chilean aristocrat and the Irish novice nun he seduced, Emilia grows up in San Francisco with her loving stepfather's support, intrepidly working around gender restrictions. After penning dime novels pseudonymously, she becomes a human-interest columnist for the Daily Examiner and wangles an assignment as international correspondent for the impending Chilean Civil War of 1891, under her own byline. Emilia's first meeting with her long-lost father in Santiago is quite moving, and her time with the canteen girls who accompany President Balmaceda's army echoes with their unsung courage. Allende expertly navigates through the violent chaos of battle and how it affects Emilia, whose romantic relationships also showcase her character growth. Fans of Allende's now-classic Daughter of Fortune (1999) and Portrait in Sepia (2000) will particularly welcome this offering, which is replete with Allende's customary poetic storytelling.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Allende fans are legion and her continuation the del Valle family saga will inspire many requests.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the riveting latest from Allende (The Wind Knows My Name), a journalist finds love and danger while covering the Chilean Civil War. Emilia del Valle was raised in San Francisco's Mission District by her Irish American mother, Molly Walsh, who left her life of Catholic religious service after an affair with Emilia's birth father, Gonzalo Andrés del Valle, a wealthy Chilean playboy. In 1892, 23-year-old Emilia is hired as a columnist for the Daily Examiner and sent to Chile to cover the war along with journalist Eric Whalen, with whom she begins a romance. The fearless Emilia lands an interview with Chile's besieged president and joins a group of "canteen girls" who assist pro-government troops with food and water and nurse the wounded. The war's horrors come to life under Emilia's unerring and steady eye, as she records atrocities committed by both sides. The thrilling and revelatory wartime narrative dovetails with a poignant family drama, as Emilia manages to track down her elusive father, who still carries the guilt of abandoning her and Molly. Allende's writing is as lush as ever, such as her description of a tense funeral scene near the end, when "hatred had dissolved like salt in water." The author's legions of fans will love this. Agent: Johanna Castillo, Writers House. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A free-spirited woman forges a career as a writer and journalist, risking scandal and war zones to follow her heart. Allende's latest opens in San Francisco in 1873, introducing Emilia at age 7, the illegitimate daughter of Molly Walsh, who, as a novice nun, was seduced and abandoned by wealthy Chilean Gonzalo Andrés del Valle. Molly goes on to a successful marriage, Emilia grows up with a loving stepfather, and at 17 she begins writing, then publishing, sensational dime novels under the pseudonym Brandon J. Price. By 23, she's a journalist with a column inThe Daily Examiner, though still forced to hide her gender behind her pen name. Rule breaking is in her nature, and while she accepts, for now, lower pay than men, she decides on a trip to New York to take a lover and learns to control her own contraception. Later, finally writing under her own name, she's commissioned to go to Chile and cover its civil war from a human angle, accompanied by colleague and friend Eric Whelan, whose focus is the military aspect. Chilean revolutionary politics make for less sprightly reading, but Emilia's individual encounters with members of high and low society lend atmosphere. These include the president, a great aunt, and eventually her father--now alone, regretful, and mortally ill. Although he disapproves of working women, the two share a "desire to see the world and experience everything intensely," and when he offers to recognize Emilia as his legitimate child, she accepts. Now the story gathers pace, with Emilia--always and predictably the rebel--witnessing the horrors of battle, discovering that she and Eric are in love, and getting arrested. Not quite plausibly, she instigates a further sequence of impulsive moves before the story is permitted to conclude. An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
