Inés then falls in love with Pedro de Valdivia and travels with him to Chile where they set about conquering the land and making a home there. She tells her stepdaughter from her second marriage,
I beg you to have a little patience, Isabel. You will soon see that this disorderly narrative will come to the moment when my path crosses that of Pedro de Valdivia and the epic I want to tell you about begins. Before that, I had been an insignificant seamstress in Plasencia, like the hundreds and hundreds of hardworking women who came here before and will come after me. With Pedro de Valdivia I lived a life of legend, and with him I conquered a kingdom. Although I adored Rodrigo de Quiroga, your father, and lived with him thirty years, the only real reason for telling my story is the conquest of Chile, which I shared with Pedro de Valdivia.
It’s an amazing story and a book I find myself picking up again and again. I found myself really liking Inés even when I was horrified at her brutality.
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