By: Isabel Allende

Internationally celebrated novelist Isabel Allende has written a magnificent historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile -- a marvelous family saga that takes up and continues the story begun in her highly acclaimed Daughter of Fortune.

Recounted in the voice of a young woman in search of her roots, Portrait in Sepia is a novel about memory and family secrets. Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past.

Portrait in Sepia is an extraordinary achievement: richly detailed, epic in scope, intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.

Review (Kirkus, 08/15/2001): "Complex, intriguing, ambitious, and uneven sequel....Though her narrative spans nearly 50 years of Chilean and American history, it's Allende's remarkable flair for character that makes it all come alive."
Review by Jonathan Yardley (Washington Post Book World, 10/28/2001): "PORTRAIT IN SEPIA is the best book Allende has published in the United States since her splendid first novel of nearly two decades ago, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. Like much of her previous work, it can be called a romance, and perhaps will be welcomed by her many loyal readers as precisely that, but if it is a romance it is also tough-minded, uncompromising and not a little bloody....PORTRAIT IN SEPIA is both an intimate examination of the inner lives of a woman and her family and a large canvas across which many people parade and on which momentous events are played out. Its romantic elements--which are to be found in its language as well as its sentiments--are counterbalanced by its shrewd, uncompromising view of those people and events."
Review by Andrew Ervin (New York Times Book Review, 11/04/2001): "Allende doesn't probe the inner life of every character to its deepest layer, but she musters enough grace and poise to give us complex histories in the simplest lines. It adds up to a book about transformation--of people and nations and of the rights of women."