Set in Valparaiso, San Francisco, Hongkong and London during the 1840’s, this is the saga of young Eliza Sommers, the fiesty daughter of fortune. Isabel Allende weaves a tale of the adventures of a spirited young woman, true love and family devotion, survival smarts as she follows Joaquin Murietta to the “gold rush” of San Francisco. Her birth origins were questionable, Elisa was brought in a box with expensive lining and linens that bespoke of her noble ancestry.Rose Sommers raises her as her own and teaches her the refined ways of the British aristocracy. Rose is the young sister of Jeremy, ship captain and head of the British contingent that does business and enterprise in Chile. Rose has a sordid past that was not acceptable in London society, thus she gets exiled by her brothers to a far away land where she pines away and writes stories about her lost love.
Sixteen year old Eliza stows away in a ship bound for San Francisco. Tao Chi’en smuggles her on board and takes care of her in the bowels of the ship where she is hidden from all the other passengers of the ship. She is apparently pregnant and has a mollusk-like still baby on board. The Chinese cook/physician nurses her back to health. She and Tao Chi’en set foot on the new California and reinvent themselves, Eliza dresses up as a “young man” and makes a living following a troop of women of ill-repute. She plays the piano. Tao Chi’en becomes a physician attending to the medical needs of workers in the new land of opportunity.
They work and survive in 49er country where men outnumbered the women. Smutty literature was in great demand as well as the services of women who peddled sex. Loneliness and being away from home fostered businesses that drew the talents of writers, and we find out that Rose Sommers becomes the source of lascivious literature that is lucrative commodity to lady-starved men. Eliza also makes a living writing letters to the loved ones of the lonely prospectors.
Joaquin Murrietta apparently becomes a rogue and wanted man. He steals and becomes a murderer wanted for a myriad of crimes. But he is also a hero to the impoverished. Eliza finally finds him as a beheaded criminal. She reverts to a life with a true and tried love, Tao Chi’en.
Allende is crisp and and eloquent, her images are vivid and she transported me to places and a time that I would have never imagined. Her description of San Francisco and its first settlers (which was not so so long ago) was a vivid historical account of how the first business thrived, catering to lonely migrants and gold miners. Fresh food and comestibles that came from South America were brought to North America in ships that had blocks of ice from glaciers in Chile!!! Pornographic literature also came from its English presses, but originated in Chile! Indeed, the “gold” in the gold rush was just yellow stuff, the real gold lay in the people who came from the far corners of the world and indeed there was money to be made because of the rush.
