Isabelle Allende:

It would be the late 80s I guess. I've got about an hour's drive to deliver a tax law lesson (*) to an interested class, I remember them, a good group.
During that drive I would listen to the book reading on ABC of Isabelle Allende's "House of the Spirits".
I was quite affected by that book, a story set around the coup that ousted Allende in Chile. I think I've got a copy but I can't remember if I read it or was too disturbed by the reading, it was quite powerful.

Her latest novel is "In the Midst of Winter" in which she revisits the violence and disruptions of Latin America, but returns to passion and its possibilities too.

(*) One of the things I'm proud of in my life, delivering a tax law education to many hundreds of students & doing it well.