This is the story of Eva Luna’s life from birth to the time when she connects with her soul-mate, Rolf Carle.
The storyline advances in two parallel lines, one Eva Luna’s, the other Rolf Carle’s, until they meet and accept each other at the end. Eva Luna, in itself, is not the story of a man and a woman in isolation, but rather a man and a woman in two separate fairy-tale-like lives who at the end happen to meet.
The story begins with the tale of where and how Eva Luna was conceived. Eva Luna's existence is the product of her mother Consuelo’s efforts to save the life of a snake-bitten Indian. Consuelo dies when Eva Luna is six years old. The master of the house wants to leave his everything to Eva Luna but his last wish is denied by the Pastor, leaving Eva’s care in the air.
Eva Luna's life after this takes a haphazard turn with her working as a servant, running away from violence, meeting people in the streets, and finding people to care for her. Even the government is not aware that she exists for nobody has bothered to register her birth. Then she meets a Lebanese man, Riad Halabi, who takes her to his home in the countryside and treats her like a daughter and gets her a birth certificate by paying off some people. When this man’s wife kills herself, Eva Luna is accused of her death, but she gets cleared through Riad Halabi’s efforts. Eventually, after making Riad Halabi her first lover, Eva Luna ends up in the city and goes through many other mind-boggling experiences until she and Rolfe find each other.

reading and re-reading not only for enjoyment but also for admiring this author’s finesse in storytelling and strong character drawing.

Eva Luna’s character and the way she inspires hope by the magical weaving of her stories to everybody around her. She changes people -and herself- from inside by communicating directly through imagination. Although she is a free spirit, she is like a magnet which draws people to her. She focuses on the positive aspects of each situation, therefore inspiring hope in everybody. She also doesn’t buckle up under any threat or under the fear of the consequences of whatever action she takes.

read everything Isabel Allende has written. She is an author one shouldn’t miss.

Isabel Allende has written a fantastic book. Eva Luna is magical, and for a very long time, will shine as a great example for a novel in the world’s literary heritage.
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 superb writer with novels rich in character and plot, and epic in scope. Some of her books are: The House of Spirits, La Gorda de Porcelana, Of love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, The Infinite Plan, Paula, Aphrodite, Daughter of Fortune, Portrait in Sepia, City of the Beasts, My Invented Country.

It is another tale of the triumph of good over evil told in mystical, magical words by an expert story-teller. Not only that, but also because the characters, even the power-hungry ones, are so well-rounded. Nobody is completely good, evil, or perfect. They are people cast by fate into where they are. Yet, they have very distinct characteristics.

The novel “Eva Luna” is about power, since the story takes the several layers of social class and gives to each individual from each layer certain amount of privileges and power over Eva Luna while she develops into who she finally becomes. At the end, the power of the individual, Eva Luna’s power, shines as she finds the courage inside herself to rise over oppressors, negative situations, and even her own imaginings.

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