Feelings, dreams and desires
Tulip Chowdhury travels through a tale of love and adventure
Taking Isabel Allende's book 'Daughter of Fortune' in hand comes with expectations of finding some surreal elements, the magical presentation that many of her books carry. But the surprise comes when one finds the book to be down to earth, revealing human endearment, agony and ecstasy, lust and betrayal. Embroidered is an intricately detailed story with pulsating characters. Rose Sommers, an exceedingly attractive, Victorian spinster, lives with her brother Jeremy Sommers in Valparaiso, Chile. It is her beauty that set the heart of Jacob Todd on fire when he came to Valparaiso to sell Bibles among the converting Christians. But Miss Rose holds a deaf ear where Jacob Todd's pleas to marry him are concerned. She is totally immersed in raising the little girl she had found on her doorstep. Eliza, a baby, was left in a basket on a cold day. Miss Rose has it rumored that Eliza was delivered to her with gold coins and had been adorned like a princess. To give the child a befitting place in society she had given her the family name of Sommers. Miss Rose was childless and her blind love for Eliza came out of this emptiness in her life. Even though her two brothers John and Jeremy are against it yet on her part it is a story of love and obsession. However, love bequeathed does not always give fruitful returns. When Eliza is a young woman, Miss Rose dreams of having her married off to a wealthy suitor with a name. But as luck would have it Eliza, at sixteen years of age, is in deep love with Joqaquin Andieta, a penniless young man who had never known his father. Eliza, living in Valparaiso, knows that the Sommers would never give her hand to Joqaquin. Daughter of Fortune is a dazzling historical novel. It holds up the minute details of life in California from the time of the Gold Rush till how in 1850, it becomes a state within the USA. It holds a detailed picture of how miners, adventurers, priests and whores lived in a transforming world where a wonderful civilization was coming to light behind the unruly scenario. The story, set off from Valparaiso, trails through the seven seas to California. It is an eye opener to Chilean society with its characteristic traits. Eliza has no chance of marrying her sweetheart and embarrassing her family. Chileans resolve everything with solicitors and barristers, they have an absurd fondness for tradition, patriotic symbols and routine. They pride themselves on being individualists and enemies of ostentation, which they scorn as a sin of social climbing. They seem amiable and self-controlled but are capable of great cruelty. In this society, in an era defined by violence, passion and adventure, Eliza, an unconventional woman, carves her own destiny. Joqaquin swears that he is blindly in love with Eliza. In his words, "It would be easier to measure the intentions of the wind or the patience of the waves on the shore than the intensity of his love" for her. Yet during the California Gold Rush of 1849, Joqaquin says goodbye to Eliza and sets for California. Eliza does not get a chance to inform him that she is pregnant. Though he promised to be back, Eliza knows that when she starts showing, the shame will have a devastating effect on the Sommers. Hence Eliza flees, boarding the ship Emilia bound for California, a sea voyage that will take three months at least. But Eliza is determined to find her sweetheart in California. The plot in Daughter of Fortune is built of epic climaxes that seem to reach out to each other and the characters in consequence become magnified with purpose. The story, woven so cleverly, becomes more and more fascinating as new characters are introduced. Thus from the time Eliza boards the Emilia we find the Chinaman, Tao Chie'n. Tao Chie'n is the cook of the ship who takes in Eliza as a stowaway. Eliza, the adopted daughter of the elite Sommers, now finds herself with the dirt and filth of the ship's storage room. Tao Chie'n, abandoned by his parents, has grown up with a Chinese physician and has learned the secrets of acupuncture and herbal medicines from his masters. Therefore, when Eliza is about to die after suffering a miscarriage on the ship, he is the one who saves her life with his herbal potions. On a flashback to Tao Chie'n's life we see that he has been a prosperous zhong yi , Chinese physician also practising in Hong Kong and had married Lin, a Chinese woman he has loved all his life. He had married her after he liked her "lilies", (bound feet) feet that were hardly four inches long. But Lin died of tuberculosis and unable to bear the loss Tao Chie'n had boarded the ship. He told the captain that after sailing around the world he would have to go back to China, for otherwise Lin's spirit would not be able to find him and because "the gate to heaven was in China". This story is built on human compassion. One of the five whores sailing in the Emilia is Azucena Placerres, a Chilean woman who Tao Chie'n bribes to look after Eliza when he is busy. The woman develops a tender spot for Eliza and tells her about her dreams of becoming rich once she is in California, for women are still scarce in the fast rising population. Azucena dreams of returning to Chile as a lady, with six trunks of clothes and a gold tooth. Eliza is reminded of Mama Fresia, her Red Indian nanny who had helped her to board the ship and who had loved her like a daughter. Tao Chie'n, Aezucena, Mama Fresia and Eliza, are bound by empathy and all these characters are so real like that the reader feels as if they are watching a life drama unfold. After the ship docks in San Francisco, Tao Chie'n does not want to try his luck in the Gold Rush. But Eliza is not ready to be alone in a place where mayhem seems to be the order of the day. Gold fever has left no one unaffected; smiths, carpenters, teachers, doctors, soldiers, fugitives from the law, preachers, revolutionaries and harmless madmen of various stripes had left family and possessions behind to traverse half the world in search of gold and adventure. Tao Chie'n finds it difficult to leave Eliza amidst all these fortune hunters. Eliza, her spirits as high as ever, suggests that it was here in California that Tao Chie'n could find his fortune, for the thousands of miners here, all need a physician. Try, as she might, Eliza is unable to find any trace of Joqaquin, but after earning some money she buys a horse to set out alone to look for him. And back at Valparaiso, Eliza's uncle Captain John Sommer boards the ship Fortuna to sail to California. In the danger-filled quest in California lies the journey of transformation for Eliza. Will she find her sweetheart? Will Captain John Sommer land in California to find Eliza among the rough-and-tumble world of panhandlers and prostitutes, immigrants and aristocrats? And indeed are Eliza and Tao Chie'n aware of the bonding taking place between them in their fortune hunt? And indeed will they find a future in this mad Gold Rush? Throughout the story words pulsate with feelings, dreams and desires. The reader is engrossed in Allende's wizardly and florid detailed universe of hope and lust. One is drawn to the characters in this feisty fiction. The extremely lucid style of writing holds the reader spellbound with the power of the story.
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