Victor repays the life-saving favor nine years later when, accused of treason, Neruda and his wife hide for two weeks with the Dalmau family until they can flee safely into exile. Allende opens each chapter with his verse in gratitude for writing those inspiring expressions of love and pride, particularly for Chile, which he called “the long petal of the sea.” Her handling of his role in the Winnipeg, a little-known historical fact, is endearing and a welcomed change after those detailed passages of Victor’s and Roser’s excruciating plights. Once it’s revealed that Roser is Guillem’s lover and with child, their will to escape into France becomes fortified.Īllende’s characterization of Neruda remains fixed throughout his appearances in the book: He is the venerable poet of the people. When his soldier brother Guillem goes missing, he must care for the safety of their recently widowed mother Carme and Roser Bruguera, the young pianist taken in by his family.
This includes Victor Dalmau, a doctor in training whose unorthodox methods in the battlefield become legendary. Francisco Franco: “So much blood ran that the following year the peasants swore that when they pulled up their onions they were red, and that they found human teeth in their potatoes.”įranco’s victory ends Catalonia’s self-government and ushers in a dictatorship that sends survivors on the defeated side into exile. “A Long Petal of the Sea” opens in 1938 at the height of the Spanish Civil War when Catalonia joins the fight against the Nationalist Party and its leader, Gen. During the mass exodus from Spain to France that followed, refugees Victor and Roser, forced to wed, find passage on a ship bound for Chile.Isabel Allende’s latest novel marks a return to the time and setting of the book that jump-started her literary career, “The House of the Spirits,” but with far less supernatural elements and a more expansive engagement of revolution, exile and the determination of the human spirit. The Nationalists, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, defeated the Republican Army. The rest of Victor's family – father Marcel and mother Carme, along with Marcel’s student Roser Bruguera – is steadfast on the side of the losing Republican cause. The war, often historically overshadowed by World War II, which quickly followed it, is a brutal precursor of the horrors to come. Victor joined the Republican Army in 1936, along with his brother Guillem, while still in medical school. Victor Dalmau, a young medic caring for the wounded during the Spanish Civil War, restores the beating heart of a young soldier with the caress of his fingers. Isabel Allende’s latest novel, “A Long Petal of the Sea” (Ballantine, 336 pp., ★★★ out of four), begins, as it ends, with the heart.
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