Inspired by her mother, Isabel Allende publishes ‘Violeta’

By GISELA SALOMON
Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic, Isabel Allende suffered one of the greatest losses of her life: The death of her mother. On Tuesday, the Chilean author publishes “Violeta”, a novel that begins and ends with an epidemic and that covers the last 100 years of history through the eyes of a grandmother inspired by her mom, Panchita, and one of the women that marked her the most. Violeta,” Allende’s second book of the pandemic after the non-fiction “The Soul of a Woman,” already has a third ready: A novel about refugees. Earlier this month, on Jan. 8, she kept up her tradition and started writing a new book.