Later in her life, a prominent rebel, the Colonel, knowing that he has to win over the people, approaches Belisa, who offers to teach him the art of public speaking. She studies dictionaries and learns language through hard work and effort. In the first story, “Two Words,” a young girl Belisa creates for herself a job providing services related to the formulation of words and sentences. The stories deal primarily with feminist concerns, a prominent theme in many of Allende's stories and novels many are based on the idea of female desire, and how it manifests in the world. Though varied in tone and content, the stories include many recurring characters from the original novel. She agrees the following twenty-three stories are new tales supposedly made up only for the pleasure of Rolfe Carle. He replies that he wants a story that she has never told anyone else, that she has made up only for him.

Rolfe asks Eva for a story, and she asks him what kind of story he'd like. Eva appears, lying in bed beside her third lover in the novel, journalist Rolfe Carle. The collection begins with a hearkening back to the plot of Eva Luna. The original novel, Eva Luna, was published in 1987.

The Stories of Eva Luna was published in Spanish in 1989 and in English two years later in 1991. The book includes twenty-three short stories that deal with love, friendship, psychological insight, and a bit of humor. These stories are told in the style of the classic Arabian Nights, with Eva Luna telling a series of tales to her lover Rolfe Carle. The Stories of Eva Luna by best-selling author Isabel Allende is a follow-up collection of short stories based on the main character of the novel Eva Luna, which tells the story of a young South American woman who finds success as a storyteller.

Luna allende novel