I could not stand Eliza’s character once she falls in love. Tao Chi’en later helps Eliza follow Joaquin to San Francisco, and again, their relationship is interesting, but Allende doesn’t fully develop it. Tao Chi’en wakes up aboard ship, but his skills as a healer are noticed early on, and the captain, John Sommers, comes to respect him.
The sea men would get a man drunk and either force him to sign a document of service or use his thumbprint. After a series of unfortunate events, Tao Chi’en is shanghaied into service at sea. The man teaches Tao Chi’en and guides him through life. As a young boy, he is sold into service but manages through his healing skills to be sold again as an apprentice to a Cantonese master. The character Tao Chi’en was my favorite. I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this novel as well as the look into life in China during the 1800s and the Gold Rush. This book took a bit longer, and I needed frequent breaks.
In fact, almost any book I read, I read in one or two sittings. Joaquin takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.Īlthough it sounds promising, this book became really tedious for me at times. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealthy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquin Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of norther California. 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. The last time I was at the library, I decided to try to remove the stigma of the first great book and pick up another Allende. If you haven’t read it, please please add it to your TBR list right away. However, I read Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende because her book The House of the Spirits is one of my all-time favorite books. It makes anything thereafter usually pale in comparison. I hate when I really, really love the first book I pick up by any particular author.
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