LITERATURE: Maya's Notebook

Isabel Allende discusses her latest novel Maya’s Notebook.

Perhaps the most powerful moments of best-selling author Isabel Allende’s recent public appearance at UC Berkeley centered on her own family’s experiences with drug addiction and tragedy. She shared with the audience the pain caused by the addiction and recent death of her husband’s son, Harley, just “four weeks ago,” the second child in the family to be lost to drug dependency. “My family is grieving right now… it has touched us in terrible ways,” the author explained. These personal experiences deeply inspired her most recent novel, Maya’s Notebook. Referencing this tragedy she said, “All the experience of Maya is what Harley lived.”