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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today we begin a special nine-part series,

Women, Writing, and the Imagination.

I'll be talking with nine accomplished and prominent women.

We'll be looking at the power of the imagination

and the reality of being a woman in the arts at the beginning of the 21st century.

And today, my guest is Isabella Iende, whose most recent book, Daughter of Fortune, has been published by Harper Collins.

She is well known and loved as the author of The House of the Spirits, of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, the stories of Ivaluna,

the Infinite Plan, her memoir about her daughter's coma and death,

Paola, Aphrodite, a memoir of the senses,

and daughter of fortune, her most recent novel,

which is set in the, along the Pacific coast from Valparaiso

to San Francisco during the time of the gold rush. It is a historical romance, and it's written

with a distinctly feminist point of view.

And I wondered where it began for you.

Probably in my own life, Michael.

I think that my life has been a quest for freedom,

...