Abandoned by her parents as a baby, Maya has been brought up by her tough grandmother Nini and her gentle grandfather Popo. At school though, teenage Maya finds herself drawn towards the wrong crowd. Before she knows what's happened, Maya's life has turned into one of drug addiction and crime. Things go from bad to worse as Maya disappears into the criminal underworld. To save her from her old associates, Nini sends Maya to a remote island off the coast of Chile. Here she lives among a traditional rural people, the Chilote, who have remained untouched by the materialism of the modern world. Basking in the warmth of the Chiloe community, Maya feels compelled to write her story and slowly she begins to heal. But can she move beyond her pain, find forgiveness and learn to live with the scars of the past?
'Allende's writing is so vivid we hear the sounds, see the bright birds, smell and even taste the soft fruit.' The Times
'A wonderful, seemingly effortless storyteller; you feel yourself sink into the folds of her narrative with an almost childlike certainty that you're going to hear a good story well told.' Irish Independent
'Her prose is rich and magical, her characters vivid. She mixes violence and horror, love and humour, with more than a touch of genius.' Mary Wesley
Author
About Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende was born in Chile, and now lives in California. She worked for many years as a journalist before writing the internationally bestselling novel The House of the Spirits. Since then she has published the equally highly-acclaimed Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna, ‘The Infinite Plan and ‘Paula.
