Book Review: Daughter of Fortune

Reviewed by Michael Attard ||

The romantic adventure spans ten years around the California gold rush, which began about 1849. From Valparaiso on the coast of Chile to the new wild west town of San Francisco, the main character, Eliza, boldly runs away from her loving adoptive parents to search for her lover, Joaquin.

The author, Isabelle Allende, has depicted her character well. The second female character is Miss Rose Sommers, who after finding the abandoned infant, Eliza, on her doorstep, acts as the girl’s surrogate mother. Miss Rose is a woman with both traditional values and a contrarily spirited independence. She is also a deeply passionate and romantic woman. Cultured, charming, young, and beautiful, there was no absence of suitors, but for Miss Rose, “the only good thing about marriage is becoming a widow.”

The nature of how the love affair between Eliza and Joaquin commenced is really a well time-tested literary ploy. Eliza’s life is materially comfortable. She lives with Miss Rose and Miss Rose’s brother, Jeremy Sommers, who has a good job with the British Import and Export Company. Joaquin is a poor young man, twenty-one years, born a bastard, rejected by his extended family, living with his sick mother, and working for Jeremy Sommers. Thus, the stars were sure to align, and one day, the young handsome Joaquin, while making a delivery to his employer’s home, would be spotted by Eliza. “Two months before, she had turned sixteen, and she was ready for love.”

On that fateful day, Eliza, unashamedly puts a note into Joaquin’s hands. “Eliza’s note contained only two lines, telling him where and how to meet her.” Three days later, Joaquin, feeling like an idiot, not knowing what to say, sputters out, “I have been waiting for you, senorita.” To which Eliza replied, “I have been waiting for you forever.”

They were lovers, but with the status quo, there was no future. “For Joaquin, California represented his one way out of poverty, his only chance to take his mother out of the slums and seek a cure for her lungs, to stand before Jeremy Sommers with his head high and his pockets filled to ask for Eliza’s hand. … On the night of December twenty-second, he kissed Eliza and his mother good-bye, and the next morning set off for California.”

With the romance established it is time for the adventure to be set in motion. A Chinese healer by the name of Tao Chi’en is the main male character of the story, and it is he who helps Eliza stow away on a ship destined for California. At this decisive point, there is no turning back. With her writing skill, the author transcends the literal moment of changing into a disguise, uplifting Eliza’s soul to a new but as of yet unknown plane. “As the articles of a young English lady’s clothing piled up on the floor one by one, she was losing contact with known reality and irreversibly entering the strange illusion that would be her life in the months to come.”

After an arduous voyage, Eliza and Tao Chi’en arrive in California. At this time, California was not safe for anyone, let alone a pretty sixteen-year-old girl on her own. As one of the characters puts it, “The law of the jungle rules; the only ideology is greed.” Tao Chi’en and Eliza travel together, Eliza dressed as a young boy, Tao Chi’en’s mute brother. An apt description of California during those times would be saloons, brothels, and, “a lot of talk about gold … but little about the sacrifice to get it.”

For Eliza, time passes slowly, the clues as to where to even look for Joaquin are few and far between. But then on the contrary, the months follow each other quickly. And while Eliza pursues her lover, her family searches for her. The multitude of personalities with their enigmatic histories and current struggles are perhaps unnecessary for the main story, but they serve to expand the reader’s understanding of life during these times.

But the deepest of stories is Eliza’s personal transformation. Her previous life existed “in a stagnant atmosphere…. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners…. Fear had been her companion.” But now. “She fell in love with freedom … now she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders.”

As Eliza continues her search, she almost miraculously manages to stay out of harm’s way. There are tales and rumors that her lover has become an outlaw, although while a “devil for the Americans … a hero for the Hispanics.” But this shocking news has no effect upon the new Eliza. “She had come to realize that she had an immutable soul…. She felt that she had paid too high a price for love.” The time of being a woman in hiding was coming to an end. Still, and always, a woman, but on her terms alone. “Eliza went to her room and stealthily, like someone committing a crime, opened the suitcase with her dresses.”

And what of Joaquin her lover? Does she ever find him? It doesn’t matter; Eliza found so much more.

[1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Cover Photo: Daughter of Fortune. (M. Attard)