Isabel Allende's 'A Long Petal of the Sea' gets to the heart of immigrant struggle

Isabel Allende’s latest novel, “A Long Petal of the Sea” (Ballantine, 336 pp., ★★★ out of four), begins, as it ends, with the heart.

The book opens in 1938. Victor Dalmau, a young medic caring for the wounded during the Spanish Civil War, restores the beating heart of a young soldier with the caress of his fingers. Victor joined the Republican Army in 1936, along with his brother Guillem, while still in medical school. The war, often historically overshadowed by World War II, which quickly followed it, is a brutal precursor of the horrors to come.

The rest of Victor's family – father Marcel and mother Carme, along with Marcel’s student Roser Bruguera – is steadfast on the side of the losing Republican cause. The Nationalists, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, defeated the Republican Army. During the mass exodus from Spain to France that followed, refugees Victor and Roser, forced to wed, find passage on a ship bound for Chile.

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We follow the lives of Victor and Roser – first during the exodus from Spain, then as prisoners, then refugees, then immigrants – as they navigate both their relationship and the country they now call home.

Timely in terms of the debate surrounding immigrants and refugees, the novel is not so much subversive as it is subtle in its exploration of the debate. Allende does not sacrifice the story for the message, and Victor and Roser's story works to humanize the debate.

Though Victor and Roser’s story is compelling, the supporting characters are just that – supporting. A few characters are developed fully and add to the story, but mostly, secondary characters are glossed over, their stories merely servicing Victor and Roser's. At times, even the couple’s child feels like an afterthought.

Still, as always, Allende’s prose is both commanding and comforting. The author writes eloquently on the struggle of letting go of one culture to embrace a new one and shows that one’s origin story is not the whole story. Circumstances do not define us, but the choices we make despite them do.

At its heart, “A Long Petal of the Sea” is a story of love, a common theme in Allende’s works. Don’t confuse common with trite. Allende shows that love is the base of all stories. While debate and policy surround the issues of refugees and immigration, Allende reminds us that these issues, at their core, are made up of individuals and their love stories.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Isabel Allende's 'A Long Petal of the Sea' humanizes immigrant struggle