Heartland's Michelle Morgan reveals what she's reading on set

Out in the picturesque foothills of southern Alberta, Michelle Morgan is busy filming season 10 of CBC's hit drama Heartland. She gave Shelagh Rogers a call to talk about the great book she's reading on set - Isabel Allende's memoir My Invented Country. 

Isabel Allende is a Chilean author, which also happens to be where my parents are from. I was born in Canada, but both my parents are from Chile. It was really cool for me to help me understand Chile, to help me understand where my family comes from, because Chile is really hard to understand. It's not a typical Latin American country. People there don't express themselves as much as they do in many other Latin American countries; people don't dance and sing as much. They seem a little bit repressed and I've always wondered why. Isabel Allende talks about the fact that Chile was colonized for the most part by British and German colonizers and, subsequently, Chile became a country that prided itself on civility and bureaucracy and being a well-organized society. It became a lot about behavior and the way you appear.  Even within my family, we're very outgoing and talkative and loving, but we don't really talk about what's happening in our personal lives. We don't get into the nitty-gritty stuff and that's typical a Chilean thing.

It was an amazing memoir to read. I recommend Isabel Allende — her novels or her memoir — to anyone, but especially someone trying to understand where they've come from.

Michelle Morgan's comments have been edited and condensed