A passionate tale of love, freedom, and conquest from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende. Born into a poor family in Spain, Inés Suárez, finds herself condemned to a life of poverty without opportunity as a lowly seamstress. But it's the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Struck by the same restless hope and opportunism, Inés uses her shiftless husband's disappearance to Peru as an excuse to embark on her own adventure. After learning of her husband's death in battle, she meets the fiery war hero, Pedro de ... continue
Renato Cisneros's great-great-grandmother Nicolasa bore seven children by her priest, raising them alone in nineteenth century Peru. More than a century later, Renato struggles to wring information about his origins out of recalcitrant relatives, whose foibles match the adventures and dalliances of their ancestors. As buried secrets are brought into the light and is bound up with key moments in the development of the Republic of Peru since it won independence.