MAYA’S NOTEBOOK is a bold departure for New York Times bestselling writer Isabel Allende. She has gone in a new direction with her first novel set in the present. Resolutely contemporary in both its voice and its themes, it is the story of Maya Vidal, a 19- year-old American girl whose troubled coming of age is marked by drugs, crime, and prostitution. Using the structure and suspense of a crime novel, with a touch of magic realism, Allende chronicles the teenager’s descent after the death of her beloved grandfather, and her recovery and rebirth when she is rescued by her tough but loving Chilean grandmother and sent to Chiloé, off the coast of Chile. On that magical island, Maya begins to write down memories of her terrible experiences and slowly regains her soul.

Patt Morrison  is a longtime reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a radio host at NPR affiliate KPCC. She has won numerous awards, including a share of two Pulitzer Prizes. She is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and has published a bestselling book on the Los Angeles River. She is frequently interviewed about Southern California on the BBC and other television and radio programs, and was a founding host of “Life & Times” on KCET-TV, for which she won six Emmys and six Golden Mike awards. A Senior Fellow in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, Morrison was featured on the cover of “TALKERS Magazine” as one of the ‘’heavy hundred’’ of the nation’s talk radio hosts – a first for a public radio host.