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Cover of A Long Petal of the Sea

Fiction · 2020 · PG-13

A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende

The war ended. They survived it. Then they had to survive everything else.

"In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them wants, and together are sponsored by poet Pablo Neruda to embark on the SS Winnipeg along with 2,200 other refugees in search of a

For14+GenreFictionLength336 pagesRead time~8.5 hours

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What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

Violence

Some

Spanish Civil War violence and its aftermath; political repression under Pinochet; some deaths

Language

Barely any

Mild language

Sexual Content

Barely any

Adult romantic relationship across decades; nothing explicit

Substance Use

Barely any

Period drinking

Emotional Intensity

Some

The weight of exile and the loss of a homeland; political terror as a constant background threat; a marriage built on necessity that becomes something more

What this book is about

Spain, 1939. Roser Bruguera and Victor Dalmau are strangers thrown together by the defeat of the Republic. With thousands of other refugees, they board a ship organized by Pablo Neruda and sail to Chile — a country they don't know, to start lives they didn't plan. Their accidental marriage becomes something real. But Chile will not remain safe forever, and Allende's novel follows them through decades of political upheaval, across two countries and one extraordinary century. Isabel Allende's epic of love and exile is grounded in the history her own family lived.

Notes for sensitive readers

Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.

Spanish Civil War and Pinochet-era political violence

themes of exile and loss

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