LGBT Book & Video Blog

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.—For her new book, "The Sum of Our Days," Isabel Allende didn't have to look far for inspiration. Her big, dramatic, loving family provided the more-fantastic-than-fiction plot.

The tricky part was writing about characters who may be coming over to dinner.

"I'm writing about the people I love the most and they're all living around me," Allende says in an interview in her light-filled home overlooking the San Francisco Bay. "It's very different, because they would have to read it and find themselves in those pages."

"Days," picks up where Allende's previous memoir, "Paula," ended—with the death of her daughter. It describes how the family dealt with that loss and with more crises life had ready for them.

Among other things, a marriage would explode as one family member decided she was gay and in love with another relative's fiancee. A fragile baby would need nurturing and Allende's own marriage to her beloved Willie would feel the strain.

"It was a very hard time," says Allende, a petite dynamo with expressive brown eyes who looks years younger than her calendar age of 65. "Everything happened. We look back at those four to five years and we say, 'How did we survive as a family and as a couple?' Therapy," she adds with a wry laugh. "A lot of therapy."

See how Allende's life has never lacked drama@ Author chronicles her own real-life drama in new book
Contra Costa Times, CA