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 ...
This week is blogger appreciation week on Bloom, the Facebook group for Tall Poppy Writers, a team of 42 female authors who've banded together to meet readers and promote philanthropic projects. I'm grateful to Janie Chang, author of literary fiction set in 20th-century China, for inviting me to participate and contribute a post, and thanks to the rest of the group for their support! I've been a member of the FB group for the last month and have been enjoying the conversations and camaraderie.
Please stop by the group this week for appearances from me and other book bloggers. We'll all be posting about our sites and hosting a giveaway. In my case, I'll be offering three copies of Janie's bestselling novel Dragon Springs Road, contributed by the author, as well as a copy of Frances de Pontes Peebles' The Air You Breathe, which was one of my favorites of 2018 so far.
For more about Tall Poppy Writers, please visit their site at http://www.tallpoppies.org. Here are links to my earlier reviews of novels by authors in the group:
Julie Cantrell, Into the Free, set in Depression-era Mississippi
Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven, set during the 1918 flu epidemic in Philadelphia
Weina Dai Randel, The Moon in the Palace, about Empress Wu in 7th-century China
Aimie K. Runyan, Daughters of the Night Sky, about the "Night Witches" of WWII, and Promised to the Crown and Duty to the Crown, about the New France settlement of 17th-century Quebec.
Hope to see you online on Facebook!
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