I absolutely loved My Name is Emilia Del Valle by Isabel Allende. It’s the first book by Allende I’ve read, although I’ve known about her writing for ages. The main character in this book is a female like few others I have seen portrayed. Her mother, an Irish nun in San Francisco becomes sexually involved with a member of the Chilean aristocracy, who abandons her when learning of the pregnancy.
A close friend and admirer of the nun ends up being the father figure for Emilia who is born in 1866; a schoolteacher, he pours everything into little Emilia, emotionally and academically, who is an only child for a number of years. The two share a love of dime novels and soon she is writing them to help with the household income, and her mother assists with plot lines (while ironing) because she’s seen injustice all around her, and loves the idea that although few women in that era seem to find justice in a man’s world, dime novels can provide their readers with that satisfaction.
Emilia is intellectually precocious and thinks the way many women do when questioning the societal and cultural norms of the Civil War era, as a reader I see she thinks and feels as I do, so is very relatable. She is audacious when seeking employment as a columnist, and her ensuing life experiences involve covering crime in the Bay Area, traveling solo, including taking a train by herself to New York City, the war in Chile, meeting her relatives on her father’s side, and being consumed by a compelling need for an adventure that takes her on a quest.
There is a passionate love affair that grows slowly from a basis of respect and admiration, until a moment in the middle of a war, there is the realization neither could live without the other. Despite this, there is more war that needs coverage for their newspaper, which Allende details effectively to the point you are turning the pages as fast as you can to see what happens next. Emilia gets caught up in the political revenge of the rebel party, and her life is threatened in the most horrific way possible. Instead of returning home to her family to plan her wedding, she recognizes her need to process the turmoil she has experienced, and seeks to journey a long way to see her father’s plot of land.
She feverishly writes her story in notebooks brought for that purpose as she travels by boat, horse, on foot, and boat again, but it is a dangerous journey, testing her stamina with challenging situations in unknown territories. She seeks solitude and completion of her own story. A friend accompanies her for part of the journey, and tells her, “Do not be impatient, Emilia. Here, clocks and haste will do us no good, time cannot be measured and plans cannot be made, we just live. It might be several days, depending. Sooner or later someone will let the boatman know that we are waiting.” He tells her he has chased transcendent moments in his life, using varying methods, “But I have never had a true revelation. That is something that cannot be found by searching for it, it must come like a gift.” Emelia is courageous and true to herself. We learn in the final words she speaks in this book whether or not she is ready to return home. I can not imagine a better finish to her story.
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