A Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende

One thing I love is when historical fiction teaches me about a slice of history I’d never heard about. A Long Petal of the Sea begins amid the Spanish Civil War, with Victor, a medical student and army medic who, along with all his family, support the Republican cause. Included in Victor’s extended family is a young woman named Roser, originally a boarder in their home but now his brother’s pregnant girlfriend. When Victor’s brother is killed as Franco’s fascists take control of Spain, Victor, Roser, and Victor’s mother Carme are forced to flee, escaping into France as refugees.

This is where the part I really didn’t know anything about began — Victor and Roser’s fictional story becomes part of a true story, the voyage of the Winnipeg, a ship that poet Pablo Neruda chartered to bring Spanish exiles to Chile. As the novel unfolds over the next several decades, Allende once again, as she did in The House of the Spirits, mines the Chilean history so intertwined with her own (she is related to the late Salvador Allende, the deposed Marxist president of Chile). But instead of the magic realism that The House of the Spirits is famous for, A Long Petal of the Sea is a story deeply rooted not only in realism but in the everyday. Victor and Roser’s lives and their marriage of convenience play out against the backdrop of epic historical events, yet their lives are full of the small details of exiles making a home in a new land, and a man and a woman learning to care for each other after a most unromantic start to their relationship.

I found this novel not just informative but engaging and beautiful.