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 ...
Cathy Lamb’s No Place I’d Rather Be is a multi-period saga that leans more heavily on the contemporary side of things, so it can work as a gateway for readers wanting to dip their toe into the historical fiction world. It intermingles the themes of cooking, family heritage, and strong women – and how broken bonds are relinked. In 2011, Olivia Martindale returns to Kalulell (a small city modeled on Kalispell), Montana, after a two-year absence spurred by the breakdown of her marriage, for reasons not revealed until later in the book. Accompanying her are two girls, Stephi and Lucy, she hopes to adopt once their abusive, drug-addicted mother’s parental rights are terminated. All three are quickly swept up into Olivia’s family baking traditions (what they call “Martindale Cake Therapy”). The Martindale women are tough and independent, and each has struggled to get where she is. There’s sister Chloe, a widowed paramedic whose teenage son, Kyle (a terrific character), has Asperger’s; moth...
