A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabell Allende

Isabel Allende’s latest, A Long Petal of the Sea, takes its name from a term the poet Pablo Neruda gave to his long and narrow coastal birthplace. In this novel, Chile becomes the place of exile for a young couple with a child who have fled the devastation of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.

Victor Dalmau served as a medical assistant during the war, and his brother Guillem fought in the war. Roser Bruguera was taking music lessons from their father and eventually came to live with them. She fell in love with Guillem, becoming pregnant by him, and the two planned to marry after the war. Instead, life intervened, and Roser entered a marriage of convenience with Victor and fled the atrocities of Spain with him and her baby Marcel to Chile.

A fictional Pablo Neruda sponsors many Spanish exiles to travel to Chile to start a new life in 1939 just as Europe is ready to break out into World War II.

The Dalmaus make a life for themselves in Chile. Victor finishes his education to become a doctor, and Roser plays piano and eventually becomes a professor of music. Marcel grows up in a loving home. Roser and Victor pose for many years as a married couple but they are strictly platonic friends. Victor is distracted by a young Chilean woman, and Roser has her own affair.

For many years, they thrive in Chile, until a military coup overthrows the government, and for some reason, Victor is treated as an enemy. The couple find themselves repeating their experience in Spain and soon enter exile again.

Isabel Allende, bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author.” An exile from Chile herself, Allende infuses the story of Victor and Roser with realism.