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Leave it up to Isabel Allende to write a novel of the conquistadors with a woman at its fast-pumping heart.
Dooa Ines Suarez herself is a conquistadora who bravely works to build the nation of Chile. Make no mistake: She is no swooning lovely waiting at the hacienda for her warrior lovers to return home.
Based on an historical figure long bypassed in Chilean historical narratives, the 16th-century Suarez is a smart, ambitious, self-made colonista given to passionate partnerships with powerful men and to the same utopian streak that has been known to run in the famous Allende family.
Allende, who has stumbled in recent books, has written her surest work since The House of the Spirits.
The story suits her, giving her events to recount that, while real, have so many surreal elements she doesn't have to ladle on any ersatz magic realism.
The houses Ines inhabits -- her impoverished birthplace in Spain, the tents of battle, an early settlement's rudimentary forts, grand imperial palaces of later years -- hold abundant spirits.
There's a primitive, cruel Christianity, the Mapuche Indians' complex demonology, a devout New World nature worship and Ines' healing, mystical mix of Catholicism and more ancient beliefs.
The framing notion has Ines writing down her experiences at the end of her life. She is racing with death to finish a manuscript for her adopted daughter before she crosses the final threshold, and "too many dead will be left in the inkwell." The urgency pushes matters along at a captivating pace.
Ines once fashioned a masculine-style riding habit to keep up with the men. She sits astride her own epic just as forcefully and true.
Ines of My Soul
By Isabel Allende
HarperCollins, 313 pp., $25.95
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