He takes her in and soon discovers that she has innate musical talent. Santiago quickly understands that Roser is a special child who will never be able to realize her potential due to the extreme poverty of her existence.

Roser is seven years old and shepherding goats when she meets Don Santiago, a wealthy professor. In a totally different segment of the story, enter Roser Bruguera. As Lluis Dalmau lay dying, he tells Victor that they have lost the war and tells him to go to France until things calm down.

Victor’s father, Professor Marcel Lluis Dalmau, is a music teacher and his mother, Carme, a chain smoking teacher. She is not interested, but both Aitor and Elisabeth become very important in Victor’s future. While in the army, Victor falls madly in love with Elisabeth Eidenbenz, a Swiss volunteer for the Association to Aid Children in War. At one point during the war Victor revives a dying soldier in a most heroic and unusual way. Victor’s team includes a driver by the name of Aitor Ibarra. In December 1937, he is assigned to an ambulance team responsible for giving first aid. Victor had been a medical student before he joined and while in the army worked recovering the wounded. Victor Dalmau joins the Republican Army in Spain in 1936, fighting Franco and his nationalist forces. The novel describes human cruelty, strength and perseverance through a compelling and emotional form of storytelling that is quintessential Isabel Allende. “A Long Petal Of The Sea” is a moving, brilliantly conceived historical novel that follows the lives of Victor Dalmau and his wife, Roser, through the Spanish Civil War, the Chilean coup and beyond.

A long petal of sea