Set in the late 19th century and inspired by the Chilean civil war which ravaged the country in 1891, Isabel Allende’s historical drama tells of a young woman born illegitimately in San Francisco’s Mission District. Emilia del Valle’s surname comes from her Chilean father, an aristocrat who seduced her mother when she was a novice nun and left before their child was born. Emilia owes her fiercely independent spirit to her liberal-minded stepfather Francisco Claro, whom she calls Papo, who encourages his stepdaughter to think for herself.
In her late teens, Emilia writes a series of successful pulp fiction novels under the male pen name Brandon J Price. By the age of 23, she is a columnist at San Francisco’s Daily Examiner; still writing as a man, she longs to do more serious work. Eventually, she is commissioned to travel to Chile, where the father she has never met lives, to cover the war. She is accompanied by a seasoned war reporter, Eric Whelan, with whom she begins a relationship, though the pair part company as they each go in search of their own stories.
Told from Emilia’s perspective, the novel is narrated by the Dominican actor Coral Peña, her reading underscoring our heroine’s single-mindedness in overcoming the strictures imposed on 19th-century women. That the romantic subplot doesn’t follow the usual trajectory is shown in the appearance of another narrator, Johnathan McClain, who reads a single chapter written from the perspective of Whelan. Back in San Francisco after the war, he reveals his “future wife has simply vanished from the face of the Earth”.
• Available via Bloomsbury, 10hr 30min
Further listening
The Parallel Path
Jenn Ashworth, Sceptre, 10hr 16min
Subtitled Love, Grit and Walking the North, this memoir documents the author’s 192-mile walk along Alfred Wainwright’s famous coast to coast route, starting in Saint Bees in Cumbria. Midway through her walk she receives a life-changing health diagnosis.
Come What May
Lucy Easthope, Hodder, 7hr 41min
Easthope, an emergency planning expert accustomed to dealing with fires, floods and terrorist attacks, offers an uplifting guide to getting through life’s difficulties and the ways we can help friends and relatives in need.
