Compare her experience entering the country with that of other immigrants you know of or have read about.

Evelyn comes to the United States as a refugee fleeing violence. In what other ways is she isolated? How is her isolation different from Evelyn’s? And from Richard’s?Ģ. The book begins with Lucia physically isolated in her apartment during a snowstorm. Each of the three main characters-Lucia, Evelyn, and Richard-experiences some kind of isolation in their present life.

As the result of a shocking crime, they depart on a precarious epic journey that reveals their painful inner demons and ultimately enables them to forge a tentative peace with their pasts.ġ. Over the course of several days, these three-each a misfit in a different way-are forced by circumstances into a rare level of intimacy. And Evelyn, a brave young Guatemalan woman, is an undocumented home health aide who fled her native country due to gang violence, which claimed the lives of her two brothers and very nearly destroyed her own. Richard, an academic chairman at NYU, is a broken man haunted by guilt for his fatal failures as a husband and father. Lucia, an aging Chilean writer who has survived political exile, disease, and betrayal, is marooned with her dog in a basement apartment in Brooklyn. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.Ī blizzard in New York City brings together three strikingly different people, each burdened with a difficult past. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. This reading group guide for In the Midst of Winter includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club.

Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of-and our need for-love. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice.Īs these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. New York Times and worldwide bestselling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil that offers “a timely message about immigration and the meaning of home” ( People).ĭuring the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his sixties, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help.

Isabel allende in the midst of winter