Island Beneath the Sea : A Novel

Allende is a master storyteller at the peak of her powers.
Los Angeles Times

From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlors of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende (Ins of My Soul, The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia) tells the story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny.

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zaritknown as Ttis the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Tt surivves a childhood of brutality and fear, finding solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in her exhilarating initiation into the mysteries of voodoo.

When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, he discovers that running his fathers plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. Marriage also proves problematic when, eight years later, he brings home a bride. But it is his teenaged slave Tt who becomes Valmorain's most inportant confindant.

A heartwrenching and powerful story story of an extraordinary woman who forges her identity and finds love and freedom under the cruelest of circumstances. Isabelle Allende has done it again.