Bily teaches writing and literature at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan, and writes for a variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she looks at the development of the narrator in "And of Clay Are We Created."

Isabel Allende's "And of Clay Are We Created" is the last story in her only collection of short stories, The Stories of Eva Luna. All of the twenty-three stories in the collection are narrated by Eva Luna, who was also the title character of Allende's third novel. Luna tells the stories while in bed with her lover, Rolf Carlé, drawing her inspiration from Scheherazade, who in the Arabian Nights saves her sister's life and her own by telling stories for a thousand and one nights. Readers who come to "And of Clay Are We Created" having already read Eva Luna and the rest of the short stories will...