Isabel Allende: A Long Petal of the Sea, Ballentine Books/Penguin Random House USA, 9780593158425, Trade Paperback,

German Edition: Dieser weite Weg,  Suhrkamp Verlag, Hardcover

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite Latin American storytellers ever since I read her famous „The House of Spirits“.  A few years ago her novels no longer held me captured as they used to and I read her more infrequently. She now has my full attention again; her latest novel “A long Petal of the Sea” was an absolute pleasure to read, written in the best tradition of Latin American storytelling.   Allende spins a captivating yarn combining historical facts of the Spanish Civil war in the 1930ties weaving them into  a love and family saga which ends in Latin America. The subject at the heart of the novel, the importance of home for wellbeing, is a very timely one, with hundred thousand fleeing their countries currently for a multitude of reasons, reminiscent of the masses that fled Europe during the 1930/40ties because of their Jewish heritage or political convictions.

Victor Dalmau comes from a family fighting Franco’s Fascists, he treating the wounded as an army doctor in the field. Among the thousands fleeing Spain over the treacherous mountains into France is Roser, a gifted pianist and the lover of his brother Gillem, pregnant with their child. In order to survive, Victor and Roser decide to enter into a marriage of convenience after it becomes clear that Gillem is dead and the only way they could gain passage on the SS Winnipeg to start a new life in Chile is as a married couple particularly since Roser is heavily pregnant.  I was completely unaware of the fact that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had actually chartered such a ship in 1939, the SS Winnipeg, gathering a total of two thousand refugees transporting them to a safe new life in Chile.  Allende uses these two richly drawn protagonists to describe the atrocities of the Spanish Civil war period, the ensuing hard years in Chile and Venezuela with all their political upheaval and the effect on the destiny of the Dalmau family.  Her vivid imagination and her own life experiences created a fascinating tale of love, family, and the power of belief, endurance and hope.

I loved this uplifting, compassionate saga, Roser and Victor felt like family, I was sad when their story ended after 314 pages – Allende at her best!