A Long Petal of the Sea

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I just had the pleasure of participating in a book discussion, through Zoom of course, with friends here in Maryland. I was so pleased to be asked to attend as the talk was of Isabel Allende's latest novel "A Long Petal of the Sea." I have been half in love with Allende ever since she sent me a personal letter over twenty years ago when offering her sincere regrets for not being able to attend our Southwest Florida Reading Festival. It was the classiest no I've ever received.

Allende fans know that many of her books address the immigrant experience and the pain of leaving one's homeland under duress. I'm sure that this theme reflects her own life experience as an exile from Chile when her uncle Salvador Allende, president at the time, had his government overthrown in a coup that was financed by the CIA. Isabel and her family escaped to Venezuela and she eventually settled here in the United States.

"A Long Petal of the Sea," a title taken from a Pablo Neruda poem which  describes the landscape of Chile, is a brilliant history lesson for those who didn't pay attention in school or, more likely, whose teachers spent little time on foreign affairs. In the late 1930's the Spanish civil war created a refugee crisis as all wars tend to do. Allende focuses on cardiologist Victor Dalmau and his brother Guillem's pregnant lover, the pianist Roser Bruguera, stranded in a camp in France,  who try to book passage on the Winnipeg, a ship that would be sailing to Chile where the poet and diplomat, Pablo Neruda, had arranged for over two thousand refugees to be taken in. The hitch was that only families could board. With Guillem missing and presumed dead in the war, Victor and Roser agree to a marriage in name only so that they can sail to safety.

For the next fifty years we follow the couple as they thrive in their new home, raise their son Marcel, face political turmoil and more displacement, and turn their deep friendship into a true marriage of equals. Other love stories grace the pages of this book but the crux of the novel is the never ending conflict between the ruling elite, represented by the del Solar family whose lives will significantly impact Victor and Roser, and the working people. Socialism, the good and the bad of it, is examined as is the unbreakable class structure, and the power of the Catholic church.

This prescient historical novel speaks eloquently to the current rise in authoritarian regimes around the world, the squelching of basic human rights, and the rising anti-immigrant sentiment so prevalent here in our own country. Though this particular book group assiduously avoided political talk one member did venture that we as a people so often fail to learn from history. I worry that this means we are, as they say, doomed to repeat it.