And of Clay We Are Created

When this is the second paragraph in a story,

First a subterranean sob rocked the cotton fields, curling them like waves of foam. Geologists had set their seismographs weeks before, and they knew that the mountain had awakened again. For some time they had predicted that the heat of the eruption could detach the the eternal from the slopes of the volcano, but no one headed their; warnings; they sounded like the tales of frightened old women. 

you know it's going to be good.  It's pretty much guaranteed that everything good in life will somehow (however tenuously) be linked to volcanoes, the theory has now been proven for Isabel Allende. This is an extract from The Stories of Eva Luna, which is a follow up to the novel 'Eva Luna'. It's a book of short stories told by Eva so it's stories within stories which is always nice. Many of the stories contain the same characters as Eva Luna, this one concerns Rolf Carle who ends up as Eva's lover (don't worry this isn't a spoiler). Rolf is reporting on the volcano erpution and encounters a girl, Azucena, trapped in the rubble as they both struggle for her survival and suffering he is reminded of the forgotten suffering of his childhood.

This was probably my favourite story in the book, but I am slightly volcano biased so the others are all also probably worth reading.