two people destined for each other finding true love through friendship and working together. In an unnamed Latin American Country, naive but willful Irene Beltran, a woman reporter,

engaged to be married to a military man, finds herself working on a routine assignment with Francisco Leal, a photographer and an underground rebel against the cruel military junta. Together they unearth some terrible crimes by the military and while doing so discover each other. To find out what happens to them at the end you'll have to read the book.

the story weaving. There are many intricate subplots almost in a race with the original story. Still the story of two lovers outshines the rest. All the characters are masterfully created in great depth as the story seesaws between personal and political worlds with astonishing ease.

read another book by this author. So I'll read "The Infinite Plan", next.

swept by the human spirit because of the writer's empathy for her characters and her ability to make them come to life.

Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer born in 1942 in Lima, Peru, where her father was a diplomat. She worked many years as a journalist. Her uncle was Salvador Allende, the elected president of Chile who was later brought down and killed by the military junta led by Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Pinochet also exiled Isabel Allende together with other members of her family. Isabel Allende lived in Caracas, Venezuela, and later in California, USA. Her exile ended in 1988 when Chilean voters rejected another presidential term for Pinochet.

Isabel Allende is a fantastic writer, at the same level as any Nobel prize winner with novels rich in character and plot, and epic in scope.

it is a book of excellent drama, political events, rich emotions and characters told with style and high imagination.

This book is written passionately with imagination, emotion and power. In my opinion Isabel Allende's books are destined to become classics in the following centuries because she has captured the depths of her characters and pictured them in a way that makes the readers see the characters as if they existed right there in front of their eyes.

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Created Nov 04, 2002 at 3:39pm • Submit your own review...