The cover of VIOLETA looks like a Tamara de Lempicka painting: a beautiful woman with light brown eyes and lustrous black hair surrounded by giant pink roses. The spine is a seafoam green with another pink rose. The packaging of Isabel Allende’s latest novel is exquisite. Even though they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, I think in this case you most certainly can.

Is it rare that anyone writing about a pandemic might pen a heartwarming, funny and touching story about what it is like to survive global trauma? Yes, it is. There aren’t too many books about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic that make you laugh and cry and feel like life is always worth fighting for. The characters survive, but their new mettle is tested by another event: the Great Depression. For Violeta, the youngest child in a family with five older boys, these moments of her growing up are filled with drama and passion, loss and wonder.

"[VIOLETA] is life-affirming, and when you fall in love with the title character, there is little that you wouldn’t do to be worthy of her love and respect."

VIOLETA is her story, told through one very long letter to someone she loves and trusts more than anyone else. With Allende’s gorgeous literary voice, Violeta writes her letter to each of us and makes us feel the need to be worthy of all her revelations.

There are few authors turning out a book every year or two who have created the kind of fan base that Allende has. Her work is easy to read but deceptively so. She always begins writing on January 8th of each year, finding a way for us to get to know her and her people and their history through love stories. The characters in her novels have a sense of purpose, spirit and soul that never fail to face all oppositions head on. Even when they don’t win or survive, they have given their all and earned our love and respect.

Violeta is no less a character than that. Her poised, honest and beautiful tone of description and the emotional quality of her every word remind us that Allende is one of the most adept and fascinating, but understandable, writers on the scene. Violeta tells stories of constant change and upheaval, and her life’s tale perfectly mirrors our experiences now. Yet we can learn a lot from her because she’s not whining about wearing a mask. She’s growing up in tumult, and in her story of bravery and love, she gives us the strength to rise against our oppressors and live another day, even in quarantine.

This is a perfect book for being homebound or restricted in what you do now. Reading it takes you to so many different places and gives you a heady sense of being able to dream well beyond our constrictions at this time. It is life-affirming, and when you fall in love with the title character, there is little that you wouldn’t do to be worthy of her love and respect.

Isabel Allende is a literary treasure. Her love stories are dire and deep, but also romantic and brave. Love really does win every fight for her, and for Violeta (and us), that is the case here in this wonderful novel. Curl up and let Violeta tell you a story. Snowed in or quarantined, healthy or sick, you will not want VIOLETA to end.