Daughter of Fortune (Spanish: Hija de la fortuna) was published by Plaza & Janés in 1999 and is Allende’s historical adventure novel — a sweeping narrative set in the mid-nineteenth century that follows Eliza Sommers from her bourgeois upbringing in Valparaíso, Chile, across the Pacific to Gold Rush California. Eliza, raised by an English import-export family, falls in love with a Chilean clerk named Joaquín Andieta, who disappears to the California goldfields. She follows him — disguised as a boy, hidden in the hold of a ship — and her search for Joaquín becomes a journey toward independence and self-knowledge.
The novel’s historical scope is vast: Allende recreates the world of the California Gold Rush in extraordinary detail — the Chinese communities, the Latin American miners, the prostitutes and merchants, the violence and lawlessness of the camps — while also depicting mid-century Chile (the English community of Valparaíso, the social rigidity of Chilean society, the commerce of the Pacific trade routes). The research is meticulous, and the historical setting is evoked with the same vividness Allende brings to her contemporary fiction.
Eliza’s journey is both literal and metaphorical: she begins as a sheltered girl defined by her love for a man and ends as an independent woman who has discovered that she does not need a man to define her. The novel is explicitly feminist in its argument — liberation comes not from finding the beloved but from the journey itself, from the experiences that transform the seeker — while remaining a thoroughly enjoyable adventure story.
Collecting Daughter of Fortune
First Spanish edition (Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1999): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First Spanish edition: $15–$35
- First English edition (HarperCollins, 1999): $10–$25
- Signed copies: $30–$75