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Anita Snow May 10, 2025 Updated: May 10, 2025, 9:34 am - San Francisco Chronicle
Bestselling author Isabel Allende has been beloved for decades by millions of passionately loyal readers for her strong female protagonists and epic story lines stretching across the Americas.
In novels such as “The House of the Spirits,” “Eva Luna,” and more recently, “Violeta,” indomitable women take center stage and drive dramatic narratives conjured into being with a splash of magic realism by the writer who was born in Peru and raised in Chile.
It’s no different in Allende’s latest book, “My Name is Emilia del Valle,” which features an adventurous journalist in San Francisco during the late 1800s. Young Emilia is surprisingly intrepid for a female of her time, challenging and vaulting over gender barriers as she moves from writing cheap novels under a male pseudonym to pushing for her real byline — as a woman — to be published above her newspaper articles.
Review: Isabel Allende’s latest strong female protagonist is a S.F. journalist
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