Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses narration, pointof- view, and the theme of intimacy and distance, in Allende's story.

The short story "And of Clay Are We Created" by Isabel Allende is written from the perspective of a woman whose "life companion," Rolf Carlé, a TV news journalist, has been sent on an assignment to a South American country to cover a catastrophic avalanche which has just taken place. The story is told from the first-person point of view of the narrator, as she learns only from television news coverage of Rolf Carlé's experiences at the site of the catastrophe. While there, he comes to the aid of a thirteen-year-old girl, Azucena, whose...