Eva Luna by Isabel Allende is a romance enwrapped in the intricacies of South American culture. Eva is a young woman born in the midst of an importunate circumstance. Her dying father manages to conceive Eva with her mother on his sickbed, while fighting off the poison from a venomous snake bite. After both parents die from tragic accidents -- her mother chokes on a chicken bone, -- Eva learns to align herself with powerful men in order to survive. Her first and enduring benefactor is Huberto Naranjo who sets her up in La Señora, a brothel.
Some years later the brothel is shut down, but Eva continues to earn provision from men in exchange for her beauty and youth, living with a man and his wife for sometime until the wife commits suicide and Eva is blamed. Eventually she enjoys more frequent liaisons with Naranjo but becomes disillusioned with his occupation as a guerrilla fighter. After she meets a European journalist named Rolf Carle, she decides to leave Naranjo for him. Together they rescue nine imprisoned guerrillas and form an enduring bond through the adventure. He promises to marry her.
This narrative is noteworthy because of the author's interweaving of Eva and Rolf's stories. While the majority of the text remains devoted to Eva, her story is told in relation to his. Rolf is introduced as the man whom Eva will grow up to love and marry. Amid her various unhappy affairs, Eva doubts she will find happiness and tenderness, but the readers know otherwise. Allende manages to draw parallels between the lives of the two fated lovers, such as their mutual acquaintance with Naranjo. By the time Rolf lives with his aunt and uncle the readers have been directed to make the connection between Naranjo's guerrilla affiliation and Rolf's preoccupation with helping the guerrilla mission.
In the end, Eva understands that for all her distaste for Naranjo's brutish mannerisms resulting from his involvement with the revolution, she admires Rolf's involvement with the revolution because he demonstrates selfless honor in caring about a plight which has no bearing on his own life. She actually cares about the revolution; it was merely Naranjo she couldn't stand. Eva falls for Rolf's messianic attitude, contrasting it with Naranjo's propensity to revere violence for its own sake.
