He isn't familiar with this region but he had spent the previous two days looking for the best site, one that you would have chosen. Your father went in the lead, guiding us. Your father was pressed to return to Chile, but he waited until the weather cleared, and two days later, when finally a timid ray of sun peered out, the whole family, in three cars, drove to a nearby forest. Afterward, we met in a church to hear mass and weep together. They were able to tell you good-bye where you lay wrapped in a white sheet waiting to be taken to the crematory. As soon as we advised them of your death, your husband, Ernesto, came from New Jersey, and your father from Chile. In the second week of December, 1992, almost as soon as the rain let up, we went as a family to scatter your ashes, Paula, following the instructions you had left in a letter written long before you fell ill. In a revealing narrative, Allende tells her daughter about many of the important events in her 'tribe' since 1992: emotional crises that include a stepdaughter's drug addiction and death, and Allende's new life as a successful writer living in California. I would love to have her alive, but she's in my heart.'īut it's Allende's turbulent family life and eccentric friends that are at the heart of the book. 'The emotional part wasn't hard either, because many years have gone by and I've learned to live with the spirit of my daughter in such a comfortable way. 'All the events are very fresh for me,' Allende says. Allende tells NPR's Lynn Neary that returning to that difficult period wasn't hard for her.

The Sum of Our Days begins in a forest where the family has gathered to scatter Paula's ashes. The latest installment updates Paula on what's happened to Allende and her family since Paula's death. Those letters are the cornerstone for Allende's memoir, The Sum of Our Days, which is a sequel to Paula, a memoir she wrote as her daughter was dying of the enzyme disorder porphyria.

And before her daughter, Paula, died in 1992, Allende exchanged daily letters with both women. For Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, a mother-daughter bond is something to forge and nurture daily - even after death.Īllende still writes a letter to her mother every day, a tradition that has endured for years.

Isabel allende daughter paula