Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Passion is at the heart of this historical novel, where a young woman chases her lover from Chile to San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849.

Eliza has led a pleasant but sheltered youth, an orphan taken in by a spinster British woman and her businessman brother in Valparaiso, Chile. When she falls in love with a company clerk, her future as a society lady quickly evaporates: He leaves in the madness to find California gold, and she disappears to follow in a delusion of love and lust.

Her amazing adventure is quite a story. She falls in with the wrong people - who end up being the right people - and finds a family away from home. She meets people from all countries and all walks of life, living out a journey she never could have imagined: becoming an assistant to a Chinese healer, impersonating a man, playing piano in a brothel and more. It's only when she gives up her quest that she finds that happiness has been building all along.