A Long Petal of the Sea

Refuge. My frame of mind as I started reading Isabel Allende’s novel titled, A Long Petal of the Sea, involved feeling a little sorry for myself. Disrupted by a stay at home order to slow the spread of Covid 19, I felt thrown off kilter by constraints on my regular activities. After I few pages into this finely written novel, I lost all sense of my situation as I felt the plight of the protagonists needing to leave Spain during the civil war and becoming refugees in Chile. While at my own home, I thought about the importance of a sense of home in all our lives. Allende explores a relationship from the 1930s through the 1990s, and along the way, we understand more about the nature of hope, what constitutes belonging, and how love grows over time and across obstacles. Fans of well written literary fiction are those readers most likely to enjoy this novel. Rating: Five-star (I love it) Click here to purchase A Long Petal of the Sea from amazon.com.