Signed paperback book by author Isabel Allende Daughter of Fortune - a novel

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of Northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

So begins Isabel Allende's enchanting novel Daughter of Fortune. As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and Northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes-among whom Eliza moves with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en-California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive Joaquín gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is.

Daughter of Fortune is a sweeping portrait of an era, a story rich in character, history, violence, and compassion. In Eliza, Allende has created one of her most appealing heroines, an adventurous, independent-minded, and highly unconventional young woman who has the courage to reinvent herself and to create her hard-won destiny in a new country.

www.isabelallende.com

Signed, hardcover book by Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia.

An historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile, Portrait in Sepia is a family saga that continues the story begun in Allende's highly acclaimed Daughter of Fortune. Recounted in the voice of a young woman in search of her roots, Portrait in Sepia is a novel about memory and family secrets.

Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time but tormented by horrible nightmares. When forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves-and to cope with the resulting solitude-she decides to explore the mystery of her past.

www.isabelallende.com