Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende Book 2 in the The House of the Spirits Trilogy series.

First published 2000

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Aurora del Valle grows up in the wealthy San Francisco household of her grandmother Paulina, carrying memories of an early trauma she cannot consciously recover. Photography gives her a means of observing other lives, but marriage and return to Chile expose the gaps in the family history surrounding her birth.

Moving through the War of the Pacific, the Chilean Civil War and the San Francisco earthquake, Aurora reconstructs connections between the Sommers, del Valle and Trueba families. The novel turns political conflict and migration into a study of memory, inheritance and the stories families suppress in order to survive.