Coloma, California, a small town near Sacramento, when John Marshall discovered several gold nuggets in the water. The news spread rapidly, marking the start of California's gold rush and one of the largest human migrations in history. Over half a million people flocked to the golden state, initiating an industry that would last a century.

In 1848, news of the gold rush reached China, prompting thousands to sell everything they owned to sail to California. Upon arrival, Chinese immigrants often faced hostility. American-born prospectors resented them, believing the land was theirs. Hostility increased if Chinese miners found valuable stakes, leading to theft of their land, renaming of their claims, and threats to their lives.

Many Chinese women turned to prostitution to fund their journeys, while others pursued traditional careers as doctors, restaurant and laundry shop owners, and farmers.

The Latino population in California suffered significantly during this time. Squatters frequently took over large ancestral Mexican estates, often with the U.S. government's approval. Anti-Mexican sentiment spread to include other Latino cultures. Individuals from Central and South America were seen as unwanted foreigners and were frequently driven out of their mines by aggressive groups. In response to the hostility and unfavorable court decisions, Mexican vigilante groups began to form. New laws targeting Latinos were quickly enacted, but only in English, as the legislature refused to translate them into Spanish.

Allende begins her novel by observing that Eliza Sommers, her heroine, has “many memories, both real and illusory,” and that Eliza recalls her life with “an astrologer’s poetic vagueness.” As a result, Allende’s novel, ostensibly told from an omniscient point of view, is best seen as a memory which incorporates magic, poetic license, and illusion—all ingredients of the “magic realism” of South American writers. Eliza also has culinary talents, a trait she shares with the heroine of Mexican Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para chocolate (1990; Like Water for Chocolate, 1992), though the kitchen plays a lesser role than it did in Allende’sAfrodita: Cuentos, recetas, y otros afrodisiacos (1997; Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, 1998).

Eliza develops her talents at the home of the Sommers family, who found her abandoned on their doorstep. Although Rose Sommers knows Eliza is her brother John’s illegitimate child, she does not tell her other brother Jeremy. Since she is Eliza’s real aunt, Rose gives Eliza all the advantages the upper-class British colony in Chile can provide. Because she has had an ill- fated affair with a married Viennese tenor, Rose also knows the power and danger of young love and strictly oversees Eliza’s activities. Eliza, however, falls in love with Joaquín Andieta, a poor young man who returns her passion, but not her commitment. He steals some money and leaves for the California gold rush; after discovering that she is pregnant, she leaves on the Liberty, an appropriately named ship since she is leaving the rigid, patriarchal, class-conscious British colony. Allende parallels the Eliza/Joaquín relationship with one between the nouveau-riche Feliciano Rodríquez de Santa Cruz and the aristocratic Paulina del Valle. The latter relationship, despite the difference in class, becomes a successful marriage only because Feliciano has the financial resources to stage an elopement; Paulina’s father, facing public humiliation, agrees to a “real” marriage.

While these affairs are occurring, Rose has developed some romantic entanglements of her own. Although she rejects Jacob Todd’s advances, they remain friends, and she discovers that Michael Steward, whom she had intended for Eliza’s husband, is actually in love with her, despite the disparity in years. Rose’s suitors and the flashback chapter detailing her affair with the Viennese tenor prepare the reader for the revelation that she is the author of best-selling pornographic novels.

Meanwhile, Eliza secures the assistance of Tao Chi’en, a Chinese physician whose past is described in a flashback chapter. He is the cook on the Liberty, and he cares for her when she has a miscarriage. Tao, which means the “way” or “harmony,” and Eliza, who dresses as a young man, live together in California, but since both have their obsessions (his, his dead wife, Lin; hers, Joaquín) they are not sexually intimate. Eliza continues her search for Joaquín, and Tao, who has discovered the plight of Chinese slaves in the lucrative sex industry run by Ah Toy, manages to save some of them from certain death. This part of the novel switches the focus from romance to social criticism, as Allende exposes the sexual exploitation and racial prejudice that lie beneath the glitter of the gold rush. There is widespread discrimination against Hispanics, especially Chileans, and Jacob Freemont (formerly Jacob Todd) writes in his newspaper column, “Gold has brought out the worst of the American character: greed and violence.” His comment sounds like a twentieth century revisionist historian condemning America in politically correct fashion.

Freemont’s writing about Joaquín Murieta, who may or may not be Joaquín Andieta, also has a revisionist ring. The reader sees Freemont “constructing—with some truths and a mountain of lies, the life—or the legend—of Joaquín Murieta.” This kind of deconstruction of Western legends is also in vogue, as witnessed by Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven(1992), a film that demonstrates the legend-making abilities of the media. Even when Murieta is reported killed, the official story “smelled of fabrication” since no one can identify the dead man’s head. When Eliza goes to see the head, her response, “I am free,” is ambiguous. It may be Joaquín, or perhaps she has simply worked her way out of her obsession. After all, at times she believes he was an illusion.

In the last third of the novel Eliza, wearing masculine garb that earns her the name “Chile Boy,” continues her search for Joaquín. During her travels she gains employment as a piano player in a brothel run by Joe Bonecrusher, another woman posing as a man. In contrast to the Chinese brothels in San Francisco, Joe’s brothel is characterized by female bonding and respectability of a sort. When their “house” burns, the townspeople come to their aid, for the prostitutes are good citizens. In an incident that reveals Eliza’s growth and her medical debt to Tao, who seems present even when he is absent, she amputates the fingers of a desperado who then becomes the notorious Three-Finger Jack, who may or may not be part of Andieta/Murieta’s gang. Eliza seems to have “lost her fear of fear”: the “fear of God . . . of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues . . . fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth.” Although she had a hidden wish to be possessed by Joaquín, “she doubted that she could give up those new wings beginning to sprout on her shoulders.” This image of flight and freedom replaces “the ghost of Joaquín Andieta,” and she continues to correspond with Tao, who is experiencing a similar change. While he continues to communicate with the spirit of Lin and his master, Lin becomes Eliza’s ally, realizing that Eliza and Tao’s relationship is love, and refutes his arguments against mixed marriages.

Near the end of the novel, Eliza realizes she needs “an ending for that phase in order to begin a new love with a clean slate.” Just as the first part of the novel focused on explicit sexual details, the resolution of Eliza’s decision becomes sexual, not intellectual. Stripping off her clothes, reveling in her body, and masturbating, she has the “unexpected vision of Tao Chi’en.” After she declares herself free of her obsession, Eliza grasps Tao’s hand, signifying their union; but her reconciliation with Rose and John, whose identity as her father has not been revealed to her, does not occur in the novel.

Rose, who supposed Eliza to be dead, learns of Eliza’s existence from John, who got the news from Jacob Freemont. (Since he had been writing articles about Murieta, Eliza went to see him, and he recognized her.) John, now captain of Paulina’s Fortuna (hence Eliza is the “daughter of fortune” in another sense), hires detectives to find her; Rose, who finds “a reason to go on living,” leaves for California despite Jeremy’s objections. Readers can only conclude that Eliza is reunited with her adopted mother and father. The ending of the novel is indeterminate, in spite of readers’ romantic assumptions, which ignore the realities of dangerous travel, racial prejudice, and familial reaction to Eliza’s choice of mate. However, the ending seems appropriate, given the thematic importance of Eliza’s growth: freed of one obsession, she is not yet tied to spouse or reunited with family.

This is very much a woman’s novel, in terms of both its insistence on freedom from patriarchal control and its depiction of characters. Aside from Tao (whose “Eastern” identity signifies self-control, lack of aggression, and spirituality) and a Quaker blacksmith who marries a prostitute and helps Tao free the Chinese sex slaves, the major male characters are flawed: Jeremy is a cold person; John is an irresponsible father; Joaquín is a thief and uncommitted lover; Jacob is an imposter and exploiter of Murieta; Feliciano is an inferior entrepreneur (Paulina’s business acumen exceeds his); and Paulina’s father is a patriarchal tyrant. (Tom No-Tribe’s function seems to be to call attention to America’s mistreatment of its Native Americans.) On the other hand, the women are strong, assertive figures: Rose, a writer of pornography, supports herself and defies her brothers; Paulina anticipates the future of shipping and becomes very wealthy; Joe Bonecrusher (who must also mask her identity) protects and nurtures her “girls,” rather than exploiting them; and Ah Toy controls the San Francisco sex industry. Interestingly, Lola Montez, the famous courtesan who visits San Francisco, receives different responses from Tao and from Eliza. To Tao, “her only virtue is her bad reputation,” but to Eliza, with her new, sprouting wings, she epitomizes the liberated woman: “Lola Montez, however, did what she wanted openly; she had lived more lives than the boldest adventurer, and had done it proudly, as a beautiful woman.”

Montez’s appearance also prompts Eliza to remember the liberated Rose and to vow to write to her. Allende seems less concerned with conventional morality than with independence, freedom, and power.

For some readers, Daughter of Fortune will be, like Rose’s fiction, a pornographic (of the “soft” variety) romance novel about a young woman finding her true love; for others, it will be the tale of a young woman’s liberation; for others, it will be a politically correct attack on North and South American patriarchal institutions, class distinctions, racial and religious prejudice, and male chauvinism. The novel invites imaginative participation, and since Eliza’s story, implicitly related to Allende, is itself the product of a memory characterized by “an astrologer’s poetic vagueness,” readers are free to have it as they please. However one chooses to approach Daughter of Fortune, it is an intriguing and captivating read.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist 95 (August, 1999).

Library Journal 124 (August, 1999): 134.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 10, 1999, p. 1.

The New York Times, November 2, 1999, p. B7.

The New York Times Book Review 104 (October 24, 1999): 17.

Publishers Weekly 246 (August 23, 1999): 41.

Time 154 (November 15, 1999): 108.

The Times Literary Supplement, November 12, 1999, p. 25.

Point of View
Allende narrates her story using a third-person perspective. The advantage of this method is that the narrator can describe events from multiple vantage points, following different characters as they play their parts. This offers the reader a broad yet somewhat restricted perspective. It is broad because the narrator observes the story like someone with a video camera, capturing the unfolding events without being confined to a single viewpoint. For instance, the reader can see Miss Rose interacting with her brothers, regardless of whether Eliza, the main character, is present in the scene. However, the narrator's perspective is limited because it provides minimal insight into the characters' inner thoughts. Consequently, readers must interpret the characters' emotions and psychological struggles on their own, based on their actions, dialogues, and occasional general comments from the narrator. An example is the narrator's remark about Tai Chi'en: "Tai Chi'en sank into widowhood with total despair," which offers a glimpse into Tai Chi'en's feelings about his wife's death.

Historical Account
Allende crafts her novel as if she is presenting a historical account of real events. She achieves this impression through various techniques. Firstly, she uses precise dates. For example, she divides her book into three distinct parts, each associated with a specific time frame. Part one spans from 1843 to 1848, part two covers 1848 and 1849, and part three ranges from 1850 to 1853. Additionally, Allende provides the birth date of Eliza, the female protagonist, as March 15, 1832. She also notes Joaquín's departure for California on December 22 and Tao and Eliza's arrival there as "a Tuesday in April of 1849."

Allende also weaves actual historical events into her narrative. The California gold rush and California's statehood in 1850 are real events. She mentions significant immigrations to Chile and the discovery of copper, which had a substantial economic impact on Chile's economy. Moreover, Allende references real historical figures such as French painter Raymond Monvoisin (1790-1870); John Marshall, the first to discover gold in California; and Ah Toy, a Chinese immigrant who amassed wealth through brothels.

Quest
Allende captivates her readers by crafting quests for several characters. As these characters embark on their passionate adventures, readers are naturally compelled to follow along to see what unfolds. For example, Eliza embarks on a journey to find her lover Joaquín, who is in search of gold. Similarly, Tao is on a quest, initially to become a healer and then to find a wife. Later, he embarks on a new quest to start his life anew. Eliza's quest is the most prominent and transformative, as she evolves from a pampered, dependent child in a wealthy English-Chilean family into an independent woman who redefines herself.

Divided StoryDaughter of Fortune is written in two distinct styles. Most of the first part is narrated in a broad and comprehensive manner, with only a slight focus on Eliza, the main character. This section introduces various characters, some of whom play significant roles in Eliza's life, while others have minimal interaction with her. Background information is provided on the Sommers family and Chile. Characters are given extensive introductions, and the relationships between Rose and Jacob Todd, as well as Pauline del Valle and Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz, are thoroughly explored.

In contrast, parts two and three narrow the focus as Allende delves into the lives of her main characters, Eliza and Tao. This section begins with Tao aiding Eliza in her departure from Chile, followed by a flashback into Tao's past. The narrative tracks their journey to California, where they temporarily part ways, only to reunite and discover their love for each other.

Books on Tape, Inc. offers an audio recording of Daughter of Fortune (1999) narrated by Blair Brown.