She, The Foreigner by Gisela Melich

About the book

Opening with the murder of my great-great grandfather, a wealthy landowner in Prazeres on the island of Madeira in Portugal, She, The Foreigner is a memoir-styled telling of my family's dramatic, colorful, ultimately inspiring history.

This multi-generation set of stories unfolds on a backdrop of entrepreneurial spirit, romance and rural living. Eventually, my father and mother "meet" as pen pals, marry and move to Prazeres, where she must contend with both his hurtful lies and being treated most everywhere as a "foreigner."

The first two children they raise, my brother and I, are moved along with the rest of the extended family from Prazeres to a "city farm," where my father enters the family business. Many hardships and "ups and downs" are faced, including the rise and fall of the business, death and "near death," the birth of two more children, a secret affair and a father-son rift that sends my closest brother away to South Africa.

During Carnivale, I meet a student, fall in love, lose him, but then go searching for him. I end up raped, pregnant, lose the baby, then discover my ex-lover's tragic death.

Visiting my brother in South Africa, I meet and marry an attractive, stable local. After a life-threatening miscarriage forces us to abandon plans for a family, the horrors of apartheid and the political unrest leave us convinced that we need to move to the U.S.

My parents come to live with my younger sister, whose greed and secrecy surface. After Mamã dies, I have a miraculous "reconnection" with my long-lost love, and following Papá's death, I return to Madeira, where I make peace with one sibling, but not the other. A line from a famous poem, "Our spirit lives eternal," becomes my new guiding light.

About the author

Gisela Melich, the narrator of She, The Foreigner, has led a life shaped by time, place and blood. Born in 1940 in the remote village of Prazeres on Madeira Island in Portugal, she was sequestered in her youth from the turbulence and horrors of WW II. Her father's family, dating back to feudal days, held a 20th century fiefdom, and so she was not allowed to play with the children of the "serfs" of Prazeres. Deprived of childhood friends, the cinema or even a library, Gisela developed a fascination with her parents' love story; and even as a child, set in her mind that one day she would write a book and let the world know about it.

After her Catholic elementary and high school education, at eighteen, Gisela fell in love with a dashing young student. When her mother disapproved and forced Gisela to stop seeing him, she and her cousin Gilda traveled to England, where she eventually found her first love again.

When their relationship ended disastrously, she soon went to heal her wounds in South Africa, where her brother Lourenço was living. There, she met an attractive, attentive Portuguese expatriate living in Johannesburg. Gisela decided to stay and take a job with a major bank, which led to her career in banking. She married Jose Jorge and remains happily so to this day. They had wanted to have children, but a life-threatening miscarriage jettisoned their plans.

In the early 80's, the political situation in South Africa became difficult and they decided to sell their home and his business and move to the States. Since then, Gisela became a U.S. citizen, a private chef and is now living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.