Zorro
by Isabel Allende
Harper Perennial, $75
It's hard not to think of Antonio Banderas slashing his way through Isabel Allende's Zorro, although her literary saga takes on the making of the original masked legend, rather than the creation of his substitute. Told with panache and not a little Allende literary magic, Zorro begins with the story of his birth to an aristocratic Spaniard and his wife, a warrior woman who almost dies during the delivery. While she recuperates, her son and another boy are suckled by an Indian servant. The two children thus become milk brothers whose characters are determined by their totemic animals. Bernardo's is a horse (loyal and strong); Diego's is a fox (zorro in Spanish). In the early 19th century, the boys journey from southern California to Spain, where Diego trains with a master swordsman. The swashbuckling young man is also a skilled horseman, acrobat and illusionist - all of which come in handy when he's needed to defend the rights of Native Americans, reclaim his father's land and win over the beautiful Juliana. Fans of Allende's magical realism and historical novels might wonder, 'Why Zorro?' Fun is her answer.
