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My Name Is Emilia del Valle

Isabel Allende,

Frances Riddle (translator)

Start date: November 1, 2025

Finish date: December 31, 2025

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Shelves: california, chile, historical-fiction, isabel-allende, journalism, hispanic-culture

From the time I read House of the Spirits for the first time in junior/high school, I became a lifelong fan of Isabel Allende. As she enters the twilight of her career, Allende has now penned eighteen novels as well as memoirs and books for children. Like any writer who has endured as long as she has, some of these books have been outstanding, others duds, and some quality writing that still fall short of her best work. Storytellers will always have a story to tell, and Allende is one of the bes From the time I read House of the Spirits for the first time in junior/high school, I became a lifelong fan of Isabel Allende. As she enters the twilight of her career, Allende has now penned eighteen novels as well as memoirs and books for children. Like any writer who has endured as long as she has, some of these books have been outstanding, others duds, and some quality writing that still fall short of her best work. Storytellers will always have a story to tell, and Allende is one of the best of her generation, although that may be bias on my part. Her last book, The Wind Knows My Name, fell well short for me, and I hoped that that was not the book that ended her illustrious career. At this point, Allende has outlived her editor and translator, but she had at least one more story about her now famous Del Valle family left to tell. The del Valles are based on Allende’s grand and great grandparents and spawned multiple books starting with House of the Spirits. Her tales of Clara and Estaban Trueba lead to a movie and a trilogy of stories featuring various members of this clan dating back to the 1840s. Perhaps, there was a gap in the lineage or another famous family member meriting a novel. This is the story of Emilia del Valle, a daring woman who might be the most remarkable del Valle of them all.

In the 1880s, San Francisco, California is still a hamlet of under one hundred thousand residents. The city is divided into neighborhoods of Mexican, Chinese, Irish, and other immigrants who originally came to California in the 1840s in search of gold and fortune. Molly Walsh and her husband Francisco Claro live in the Mission, the city’s Mexican district. Molly is a story in her own right, a strong woman left behind by her father and brothers as they went off to find gold only to never return. Raised in an orphanage, Molly was destined to become a nun and teacher until she met Andres del Valle, who seduced her. A one time tryst, Molly found herself pregnant and left the convent, but found a willing husband in Francisco Claro, her co-teacher and mentor at the Aztec Pride School. Claro always wanted children but lived the life of a confirmed bachelor and over time became Molly’s loving husband. He was also the only father that Emilia del Valle ever knew, her Papo who loved her to death. With an eight year age gap between Emilia and her next closest in age sibling, Francisco, known as Pancho, took her to school at a young age, and encouraged her to follow her dreams. Emilia’s dream was to be a writer, but in the 1890s, few women enjoyed careers as writers. Many, even the most well known novelists, got their start by publishing under a man’s name. So Emilia del Valle writes as Brandon J Price and becomes a best selling dime novelist; however, she desired more, a career writing under her own name, which would put Emilia in select company, although few doubted her.

Throughout her life, Molly Walsh harbored hatred toward Andres del Valle. She wished that he would acknowledge his daughter as legitimate rather than as yet another huacho. The far thinking Molly, who over time established herself as a top baker in San Francisco and a legitimate businesswoman, wanted her daughter to receive an inheritance. The family never did without but with four children, money could never hurt. That was Molly’s dream, not Emilia’s, who just wanted to write and viewed Francisco as her father. As luck would have it, Emilia became a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner at a time when editors doubted that women could even write. She had to publish under Brandon J Price but Emilia’s writing ability was too good to ignore. I would have enjoyed this story more, perhaps, if Allende used Emilia’s profession as a jumping off point toward women’s suffrage, which was gaining steam in the 1890s; however, this is not her forte. Allende’s bread and butter is adventure stories taking place in either California or Chile, and this story centers around the Chilean civil war of 1891. She briefly touches on this skirmish in earlier books because Severo del Valle, father of Clara, fought in the conflict and became an amputee, yet still fathered seventeen children with his wife Nivea. Here, Emilia and the Examiner’s top reporter Eric Whelan are sent to cover the war and report on the American angle. It would involve frontline reporting and death, but this would not be an Allende story if it did not feature the glory days of Chile, and, of course, a budding romance.

Because the Examiner editor doubted womens’ abilities, he named Eric Whelan the war reporter and left Emilia to write human interest stories. Their stories overlap, and after working together for three years, romance bubbles underneath the surface. Emilia is determined to meet her father even if she has zero expectations and does not desire an inheritance; those are her mother’s dreams. Through her contacts, she gains an audience with Paulina del Valle, the woman who in Portrait of Sepia started a food shipping business and shares a granddaughter with Eliza Sommers and Tao Chi’en. Now Aurora has nearly come of age, and Allende continues to name del Valle women using white- Aurora, Nivea, et al- to symbolize purity. There is nothing pure about Paulina, a feisty old lady who still holds a place of high regard in Santiago’s upper crust of society. She is raising her granddaughter because all of her sons and nephews are good for nothings, and Emilia is hardly the only huacha among the del Valles. In hiding during the war, Paulina’s scenes serve as comic relief, only because she has become even more narcissistic and dramatic in her older age. Her role is to foster a meeting between Emilia and her father yet she is hardly a main character here. Allende’s books contain a web of characters, and there are so many del Valles that eventually some of them will turn up. Here is no different, although I was hoping for an encounter between Molly Walsh and Eliza Sommers in San Francisco, perhaps in later writing for if that is to occur, it would bring the del Valle immigration story full circle.

At heart Allende is a romantic. I would have appreciated it if Emilia and Eric maintained a platonic working relationship, allowing both of them to enjoy long careers as writers. Their love blooms in the midst of war as people are desperate for love and marriage. Emilia encounters strong women throughout the war. This is done by design because Allende writes of stronger female protagonists with men as necessary peripheral characters. In her older age, she does not have the heart to create any villains. The war is bloody and not for the feint of heart. The rebels or congressionalists overthrow the presidency. The war only takes eight months, and there are many casualties on both sides, mainly because medicine might have advanced but not to the point of avoiding death during routine amputations. The women Emilia meets are named canteen girls and they also put themselves on the front line, risking death, and some do die. These are the tales that Allende must have heard from her grandparents because, as aforementioned, Severo del Valle served in the war. Unlike many of the soldiers here, Severo survived amputation and went on to acquire riches from working in the mines. Because Emilia bares the surname del Valle, she is associated with the presidency and jailed for her “treasonous actions.” Because of her association with the del Valle clan, she is also able to get out of jail, Paulina del Valle believing herself to be the hero, as clearly she was the most illustrious del Valle of them all.

Isabel Allende is at her best when she writes stories featuring magical realism set in Chile. There are only two scenes employing magical realism here, but they are important to overall story development. Perhaps, all Allende needed to do was return to the del Valles and weave another memorable story out of an otherwise minor character. Some readers note that the tale of Emilia del Valle is the story of Eliza Sommers in reverse or Allende repeating the same saga from House of the Spirits. This is where I differ. Emilia’s story takes place nearly fifty years after Eliza Sommers sailed to America. She is a contemporary of Paulina, not Emilia. The illustrious del Valles stemming from Severo and Nivea are only mentioned in passing and no where can readers find Barabas the dog or tables communicating with spirits. Covadonga the dog is not as magical as Barabas but she is smart and plays a key role in her own right. Allende writes of Emilia as a modern woman who wants to be a writer under her own byline. Like the author, she will always have a story to tell and would not allow marriage to impede her would be career. Romance, magic, and nostalgia of older Chile and California are all the elements of Allende when she is at her best. While this is not House of the Spirits, nothing is, I no longer have a bad taste in my mouth from her last book. If as a storyteller, Isabel Allende is always going to have a tale to tell, she should stick to the del Valles and weave more stories of their illustrious history.

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