PORTRAIT IN SEPIA by Isabel Allende

Take heart, all you who harbor a secret love for the historical novel. I picked this book up expecting something more mystical, like Allende's HOUSE OF SPIRITS, but found instead a first-person narrative that manages to tell the stories of all the important characters in an omniscient way. Think of the narration in THE LOVELY BONES, minus the rape and murder.

Essentially, this is the story of a young 19th-century Chilean woman trying to uncover her past through the stories she gleans from her family. She is raised by her grandmother, but there were other parents, other grandparents she doesn't remember, and recurring nightmares she can't comprehend. The story is in the untangling of the pieces of her history.

If you've never read Allende, this book might be a good one to start with. If you have and couldn't get into the more ephemeral stuff, this story is grounded in reality from start to finish -- no dead relatives come back to chat, and there are no ghosts except the ones in Aurora's mind.

~Michelle