Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...
Set in the Scottish Highlands and Edinburgh as the Edwardian era winds down, Douglas’s concise yet engaging romantic novel follows a young woman’s path to fulfillment and illustrates the pain of unrequited love. Lorne Malcolm’s decision to run away with her employer’s son on her wedding morning shocks her older sister, Rosa, and devastates her fiancé, Daniel MacNeil. A housemaid in Inverness, Rosa can’t comprehend Lorne’s self-centeredness, especially since handsome Daniel is quite a catch. Some months later, when Daniel begins courting Rosa, she is thrilled but wary; in his proposal, he asks her to help him forget Lorne, which isn’t the most promising beginning. They marry and move into a big-city tenement, and the story is sympathetic toward Rosa, left alone all day while Daniel works. Her pursuit of a job outside the home gives her purpose but adds complications to their marriage, since Daniel proves resistant, and she still isn’t certain of his love. The theme of women’s early 20th...
