And of Clay Are We Created

Unlike many novelists, Isabel Allende did not train as a fiction writer by creating short stories before moving on to novels. Her first three works of fiction were novels, and she did not turn to the short story form until readers of Eva Luna asked to see the stories the title character refers to. Ў®Ў®And of Clay Are We CreatedЎЇЎЇ was written specifically for the 1989 collection The Stories of Eva Luna.

The story is about a young girl who is trapped in a mudslide, and a reporter, Rolf CarlЁ¦, who is sent in his television helicopter to cover her rescue. Unable to maintain his reporterЎЇs objectivity, he joins in the unsuccessful rescue attempt, and then stays with the girl until she dies. As he talks with the girl over a period of days, CarlЁ¦ remembers and begins to address his own youthful suffering, which he has repressed for many years. At a further remove, the girl and the reporter are being watched on television by the narrator, CarlЁ¦ЎЇs lover, who experiences the pain of both.

Allende has often spoken about Ў®Ў®And of Clay Are We CreatedЎЇЎЇ and its importance to her. The characters