[.ca] Daughter of Fortune (ISBN 038082101X)

From Amazon.com:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 2000: Until Isabel Allende burst onto the scene with her 1985 debut, The House of the Spirits, Latin American fiction was, for the most part, a boys' club comprising such heavy hitters as Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario Vargas Llosa. But the Chilean Allende shouldered her way in with her magical realist multi-generational tale of the Trueba family, followed it up with four more novels and a spate of nonfiction, and has remained in a place of honor ever since. Her sixth work of fiction, Daughter of Fortune, shares some characteristics with her earlier works: the canvas is wide, the characters are multi-generational and multi-ethnic, and the protagonist is an unconventional woman who overcomes enormous obstacles to make her way in the world. Yet one cannot accuse Allende of telling the same story twice; set in the mid-1800s, this novel follows the fortunes of Eliza Sommers, Chilean by birth but adopted by a British spinster, Rose Sommers, and her bachelor brother, Jeremy, after she is abandoned on their doorstep. "You have English blood, like us," Miss Rose assured Eliza when she was old enough to understand. "Only someone from the British colony would have thought to leave you in a basket on the doorstep of the British Import and Export Company, Limited. I am sure they knew how good-hearted my brother Jeremy is, and felt sure he would take you in. In those days I was longing to have a child, and you fell into my arms, sent by God to be brought up in the solid principles of the Protestant faith and the English language." The family servant, Mama Fresia, has a different point of view, however: "You, English? Don't get any ideas, child. You have Indian hair, like mine." And certainly Eliza's almost mystical ability to recall all the events of her life would seem to stem more from the Indian than the Protestant side. As Eliza grows up, she becomes less tractable, and when she falls in love with Joachin Andieta, a clerk in Jeremy's firm, her adoptive family is horrified. They are even more so when a now-pregnant Eliza follows her lover to California where he has gone to make his fortune in the 1849 gold rush. Along the way Eliza meets Tao Chi'en, a Chinese doctor who saves her life and becomes her closest friend. What starts out as a search for a lost love becomes, over time, the discovery of self; and by the time Eliza finally catches up with the elusive Joachin, she is no longer sure she still wants what she once wished for. Allende peoples her novel with a host of colorful secondary characters. She even takes the narrative as far afield as China, providing an intimate portrait of Tao Chi'en's past before returning to 19th-century San Francisco, where he and Eliza eventually fetch up. Readers with a taste for the epic, the picaresque, and romance that is satisfyingly complex will find them all in Daughter of Fortune. --Margaret Prior

Picks up speed in California:
The book is best when it follows Eliza Sommers. The backstories of Rose Sommers, Karl Bretzner, and Tao Chi'en stop the natural flow of things and just drag down an otherwise wondeful book. The story picks up speed when Eliza reaches California. The Chilean part takes too long to establish characters and motivation.

Daughter of Pain:
I was more than disappointed in this book. When I got to the end it felt like it had never really started and I wished that I hadn't spent the time reading it. I have heard her other stuff was better... but trust me skip this one.

Daughter of Fortune:
Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende, is a captivating adventure about a young girl who journeys a long way to find what real love is. Allende has an amazing talent with character development and she is so knowledgeable about this time period that it is as if she had actually lived then. Eliza Sommers, a girl brought up in Chile, falls in love with one of her uncle John's workers named Joaquin Andieta, at first sight. When he leaves for California in search of gold during the rush, she is left desperate and lonely, pregnant with his child. Luck befriends her and she is stowed away on a ship headed to San Francisco with the help of the Chinese "zhong yi" (medicine man), Tao Ch'ien. She plays the piano and cooks to make a living while keeping an eye out for her lost lover. All the while, she develops a very close friendship with Tao. With every passing day, she searches and searches for her Joaquin. She pretends to me male, and sends word around that his "brother" is looking for him, hoping that he will realize that she is there and looking for him. In the end, she has to make the decision whether or not she still loves Joaquin and if he is worth such tribulation and sacrifice. I normally don't like sappy love stories, but this one was more sincere and realistic. This book was a little slow, but I got to know the characters well enough to the point where I cared about them. Allende gives detailed history of each character and it helped me get to know their background. The characters go through a lot of adventures, mentally and physically, and the reader travels right along with them.

Captivating!:
Finding and reading this book was like one of those fateful accidents that can potentially change your life. I was stuck in Fresno over the weekend and found myself hanging around the Borders bookstore. Allende's book was displayed on an endcap, and I must admit I was at first captivated by the portrait of the young woman on the cover. The fact that it was also heralded as an "Oprah" selection did not impress me. I read the first page of this book and was immediately captivated. As a native of California, Allende's depiction of the Gold Rush era, and the rampant racism inherent to the state's early formation, appeared historically accurate, and was sometimes disturbing. I suppose the life changing part concerns a shift in my perception of how California was settled. My 8th grade California history class never discussed slavery as demonstrated by Allende's reference to the Singsong girls (Chinese prostitutes) who sat chained to their beds chanting "two bittee lookee, four bittee feelee, six bittee doee," and racism portrayed by the seizure of lands held by Californians and Mexicans. Contrary to some of the other reviews here, I believe the character development of Eliza and Tao Chien was superb. I was disappointed, however, that Eliza's culinary skills were never fully developed, as she could have made a fortune in the gold fields running a restaurant. Instead, Eliza tends to squander her gifts in a fruitless search for a less than honorable lover. I read this book in two days, and I am not a fast reader. The story grabs you, and by the end I was sorry to have to leave the world and lives Allende had created. To me, regretting the end of a book is the mark of a good story. The book deals with slavery (Chinese), oppression (Chinese and Latino), greed (everybody), romance, history, and prostitution.

An engaging story:
I enjoyed this book. The biggest weakness, in my opinion, is that there is quite a lot of setup and backstory to read that covers many different characters before the plot really gets going. As a reader, I occasionally found it offputting to read the pages and pages of backstory without having many hints as to why I was being told this information. However, once the story got going, I was capitvated. I was hoping for more resolution for several of the characters, though.