A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

Let me start with a disclaimer: I’m a massive fan of Allende’s. Along with at least 75 million other readers in many different languages, I simply adore her writing. Since reading her first book, The House of Spirits, all those years ago, I’ve loved the effortless way in which she spins a yarn to open up a section of history for me. I’m reminded of Zorro, Maya’s Notebook and Island Beneath the Sea, to name a few.

Allende’s latest offering, A Long Petal of the Sea, also managed a good tug on the heartstrings as I found it quite relevant to the destruction taking place in many countries in the world today, where leaders are blighting their once beautiful countries in their ruthless quests for power. Often leaving the citizens of those countries with little choice but to flee – sometimes literally for their lives – to become migrants, refugees with nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

In her book, Allende recounts the bloody reality of the Spanish Civil War and the escape of refugees to Chile on the SS Winnipeg chartered by Nobel prize winning poet, Pablo Neruda. And just as they manage to settle in and find their place in their new country, these same migrants once again face a dictatorship – this time under Pinochet – and are forced to up sticks yet again, exiled to Venezuela.

It is the story of gentle-natured Victor Dalmau who is training to be a doctor when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. He is swept up in the chaos of a war-stricken country and left with little choice but to work as a doctor on the front line while his brother Guillem, the handsome militia man, fights on the frontlines. It is also the story of Roser, a young piano student who falls in love with Guillem and is forced to flee her homeland, pregnant, alone and unaware of the fate of her love.

Roser makes it to France, along with thousands of other Spaniards, where she is interned before being rescued by a Quaker family who deliver her baby in the safety of their home. Victor, also imprisoned in France, eventually finds her and convinces her to escape with him and 2 000 other Spaniards to Chile. In order to get her passage on the Winnipeg and in this way ensure that his nephew can begin a new life in a new country, they have no choice but to get married.

It is a beautiful story of the unique marriage between Victor and Roser and how their special bond sustains them; and about human tenacity and the ability to build a new life time and again, despite never-ending challenges. Even if the book sometimes reads like high-paced condensed non-fiction, Allende still succeeds to hold one’s attention through the story of a family that is held brave and strong through love.

And if you enjoy Pablo Neruda’s poetry, you will enjoy his presence in this book as Allende recounts parts of his life and uses his verse not only in the title of the book but as epigrams for each chapter.

The fact that Allende herself was forced to leave Chile and to live in exile in Venezuela before she immigrated to the US, makes this a remarkable work of lived experiences mixed with fiction, and set amid fascinating history. It’s a tale of huge consequence in a time when the world finally has a chance to, for once, stop, take stock and to read and learn from history in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes.