Allende, Isabel

Diego de la Vega, born to a Spanish aristocrat and Shoshone woman in eighteenth-century California, grows up aware of the brutalities perpetrated against Native Americans by Europeans, and when he is sent to be educated in Barcelona, he joins an underground alliance to battle injustice, setting the stage for his return to his homeland and the birth of the persona Zorro.

Collection of twenty-three short stories of Argentinian peasants and patricians, revolutionaries and tyrants, and seductresses and fortune tellers.

Story of Gregory Reeves's search for love and his attempt to reconcile his past which included poverty, neglect, war, and abusive relationships with his current strivings for success and peace of mind.

A woman reporter in a Latin American country and a photographer are sent on a routine assignment. The two uncover a hideous crime, the revelation of which could challenge the terrorism of the military regime.

Aurora del Valle, raised in the privileged class of Chile by her grandmother, is tormented by nightmares and half-memories of events set in San Francisco's Chinatown. Disillusioned in her marriage, Aurora sets out to rediscover the missing years of her early childhood.

Nineteen-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up with her grandparents. Her grandmother is a force of nature--willful, outspoken, wise, and fiercely protective. Her African American grandfather, an astronomer and professor, is a gentle man with a comforting presence. When her grandfather dies, Maya falls apart and turns to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime. Lost in a dangerous underworld she is rescued by her grandmother who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile.

Eliza, an orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chili, follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush that began in 1849. There she creates an unconventional, but independent life, as she searches for her elusive lover. By the time she hears news of him, she is no longer as anxious as she once was and she finds she must decide who her true love really is.

A story written when Isabel Allende's daughter became gravely ill. Bizarre ancestors and delightful and bitter childhood memories are woven together to create a powerful autobiography.