Of loss and love in Isabel Allende's life

Tumultuous years: Isabel Allende's life experiences and relationships are documented in her writings.

Novelist Isabel Allende talks about her enduring and complex relationship with her mother, the death of her daughter, and her family’s tussle with drug addiction.

THE longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily. I have a closet full of my mother’s letters in plastic boxes; one for each year of our correspondence. We are very different women. She is Catholic, conservative, a real “lady” in the 1950s sense of the word, and also creative, curious and smart. Like most women of her generation and in her social class, she was raised to be a housewife and a mother; she depended first on her father and then on her husband, so she never felt really free.