Retrato en sepia.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Retrato en sepia, by Isabel Allende. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2000.

Isabel Allende's latest novel continues the saga of the Sommers and Rodriguez-Del Valle families, begun in Hija de la fortuna [Daughter of Fortune]. Eliza Sommers, the adventurous protagonist of the first book, is the illegitimate daughter of John Sommers, an English sea captain whose brother and sister settle in Santiago. Raised to be a proper young lady by her aunt (who writes naughty novels on the side), Eliza follows her lover Joaquin to California during the gold rush, but winds up marrying Tao Chi'en, a zhong-yi, or Chinese doctor.

The couple's daughter, Lynn, reputedly one of the most beautiful girls in San Francisco, is seduced early in Retrato en sepia by Matias, son of Paulina del Valle and her husband, Feliciano Rodriguez. Paulina is a shrewd businesswoman who seized the opportunity to make a fortune in California, not by panning for gold, but by supplying the miners with goods. Using steamships, she makes a killing transporting produce and other merchandise from Chile to California. Matias inherits neither his mother's ambition nor her smarts, however. Instead, he gravitates toward San Francisco's countless brothels and opium dens. When he gets Lynn pregnant, he runs off to Europe, where he sinks further into decadence.

Severo del Valle, Paulina's hardworking nephew, falls in love with the girl and marries her, thereby legitimizing the baby, Aurora. After Lynn dies from a hemorrhage, Severo leaves for Chile to fight in the War of the Pacific. The formidable Paulina attempts to seize the child, but Eliza and Tao are determined to raise her. However, when Tao is murdered suddenly, Eliza brings Aurora to her paternal grandmother and disappears. After Feliciano dies, Paulina marries Williams, her butler, who masks his lower-class origins behind the accent and manners of an English lord, and returns to Chile. There, Williams mingles easily among the creme de la creme of Santiago society, and Paulina increases her fortune by pioneering the Chilean wine industry. She raises Aurora in the lap of luxury with the intention of marrying her off to a suitable husband. However, Aurora is plagued by a sense of mystery surrounding her background. She knows nothing of her mother's family, for Paulina has taken care to hide her Chinese ancestry. Furthermore, she is tortured by a recurring nightmare in which she sees pajama-clad children fleeing a Chinese man lying in a pool of...