Daughter of fortune
Subtitle: a novel
By: Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 399
Subjects: Gold mines and mining -- California -- Fiction; California -- History -- 1846-1850 -- Fiction; California -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Work titles: Hija de fortuna.
Description: "Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, 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 Joaquin Andiera, 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.

Joaquin takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him."--BOOK JACKET.

"So begins Isabel Allende's new novel, Daughter of Fortune, her most ambitious work of fiction yet. 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 Joaquin 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."--BOOK JACKET.