Inspired by her mother’s life story and bookended by two pandemics, Isabel Allende’s novel Violeta ... flu in South America and precedes her family's fall from grace during the Great Depression.

Isabel Allende was born in Peru ... The House of the Spirits – an epic tale of four generations of a family, inspired by her own. “I didn’t have to invent much with these lunatic relatives.” ...

WATCH: Isabel Allende on studying real people for characters in her novels When writer Isabel Allende creates characters for her novels, she often looks to real people as “models.” For a crime ...