Chilean novelist Isabel Allende has been critically acclaimed for her unique prose style. In addition to her use of a technique called "magic realism," Allende's works are noted for their underlying feminism and her sensitive depiction of both Latin and American culture. Now making her home in California--Allende has lived in the United States since 1988--she brings her vivid Latina storytelling skills to each of her works, creating memorable characters and vivid settings. Writing her first novel only after spending several years hard at work as a journalist in her native Chile, Allende has been forced by circumstance to deal with several personal tragedies. While difficult emotionally, such events have, perhaps, helped inspire within her a writer's muse that has propelled Allende to prominence as the first internationally acclaimed Latin American woman writer. Her books--which the multilingual Allende continues to compose in Spanish--have been consistently popular with both...