Among Isabel Allende's many gifts is her ability to write full, compelling characters which she does with great success in The Wind Knows My Name. In this book Allende weaves together the stories Anita and Samuel, the two main characters whose lives were upended and shaped by violence, war and migration and she tackles many issues including human rights abuses, family separation at the US/Mexico boarder and Covid. Although Samuel and Anita are from different parts of the world and are at opposite stages of their lives, Allende proves the commonality of humanity where resilience and survival are default settings. I have already started to recommend this book widely as I imagine all readers will be moved by these stories.

Samuel Adler is sent to refuge during World War 2. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz finds herself in an immigration camp after being separated from her mother while fleeing into the US. These stories tell us about a parents love and children who survive.

Ms. Allende can sure tell a tale. She really packs a lot of story into a book that is less than 300 pages! I greatly enjoyed the beginning of the book; especially the first two stories. As more stories and characters were introduced, I wasn’t as interested. There were just so many people and stories! I kept with it and in the end appreciated it all and how they came together.

The Wind Knows My Name comes out 6/6.

With lyrical and elegant prose, intertwined and nuanced characters and alternating POVs and a timeline that takes us from the rise of the Nazis in Austria through COVID to present day in California, Allende’s latest is definitely one to pick up and a story that will stay with you long after the last page is read.

Bringing together both the humanitarian and human rights crisis of family separations at the boarder and Nazis and the Holocaust, Allende brings together narratives from refugees of the past and today. It was raw, emotional, and certainly hard to get through, however the treatment for both Samuel’s early life and Anita in present day, is done respectfully without glossing over the horrors both experienced. I was immediately gripped by Samuel’s story and seeing where and how Allende takes us with him, connecting him to another refugee story, Anita, after making the border crossing with her mother.

Along the way, we get some other POVs, including Leticia, who’s life we don’t see much of, but whose backstory tells us the violent history of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Through Leticia’s family and backstory, we learn not just critical history that even now is denied. Downplayed, and covered up, but nonetheless highlights the very real dangers and violence immigrants as fleeing as they make their journey to the U.S.

I loved how these narratives both bring key historical knowledge to the reader but also end up weaving together in a way that inspires hope, compassion, and acceptance. However, I will say that a couple of the narratives felt extraneous. For example, Frank’s passages were a bit middling and I found it hard to care about his story, even if he does end up coming around from corporate law to immigration law. I also felt Selena’s character wasn’t as important as I expected and ultimately found her forgettable, even though she is another Latinx character who I think could have tied more closely to the overall themes and messages. Another issue I had was in ultimately how the stories come together. While I loved that they ultimately did and what became of them then, the road there felt a bit too circuitous and Samuel’s story specifically felt a bit underdeveloped.

Despite the two issues above, all in all, this feels like a triumph in that is captures and brings together so many narratives and inspires social justice. Tackling racism, classism, immigration, politics and corruption, and trauma, this isn’t an easy story, but it is incredibly important. Please check TWs as there are serios violent and emotional events, some on page and some referenced, that occur.

Thanks netgalley and the piblisher for giving me an ARC of this book!

In classic allende fashion, the histories and struggles of many work to create the story of one fractured family- from the night of broken glass in austria to the gut wrenching pain of seperation at the modern border and loneliness of pandemic.

For a long while i struggled to find the story threads, but it did come together cohesively, and it was a short, and in the end heartwarming read about found/chosen families and goodness in the face of unending tragedy. I think allende tried to force some magical realism in there when there certainly didnt need to be any, which just made of the characters seem insane...but hey. Thats whats she does. I overall enjoyed in.

I have enjoyed Isabel Allende's writing for years, but The Wind Knows My Name may be my favorite. At first it seems like there are three different stories in the book (maybe four). In 1938 Samuel is a Jewish boy living in Austria. After Kristallnacht, he is sent on a Kindertransport to England, not knowing what happens to his parents. In 2019, Anita is a seven-year-old girl who flees El Salvador with her mother. and is separated at the border. We learn each of their heartbreaking stories, learn about the difficult choices made by their mothers, and how family can be more than the people you are related to by blood. I appreciate NetGalley for letting me read this story in exchange for an honest review - it may be my favorite for the year.

There is simply no one who weaves sentences and words with more magic than Allende. Her latest connecting the Holocaust to the modern day border issues and abuses to migrants is genius, and human. The characters leap off the page with equal parts pain and joy. I loved it

This was my first Isabel Allende book and I loved it so much, her writing was amazing and the story captivated me since the beginning. It jumps back and forward to the past and present with two different stories that somehow mesh. After reading this you can't help but root for this amazing characters, this story was beautiful and so moving. Thank you NetGalley for my e-arc!!

Allende's writing seems to have changed in her two most recent books (Violetta and The Wind Knows My Name) to a more journalistic style that's a bit less engaging than her earlier novels, but no less worth reading. This newest novel opens in Vienna shortly after the Anschluss, when pogroms against Jewish citizens are beginning. After his father is taken away, presumably to a concentration camp, six-year-old Samuel is placed by his mother on a Kindertransport train taking Jewish children to safety in England. Soon the story shifts to modern day America where again children are being separated from their parents, this time by immigration agents at the border between Texas and Mexico. Allende draws clear parallels between the harsh treatment of the Jews during WWII and of asylum-seekers from Central America in the present day, and doesn't hesitate to point a finger of blame on US foreign policies that helped to overthrow democratically-elected governments and install dictators friendly to American business interests in Central American countries. After a number of twist and turns, the story is drawn to a satisfying close that connects a now-elderly Samuel with a young Salvadoran child separated from her mother, and acknowledges the pain inflicted on each of these children.

Another stellar book by Isabel Allende. This is a book that is very emotional and has the heart and love the Allende brings to all of her works. It is an essential read of the horrors that have been and are going on around us. It is about resilience and healing and love. Each of the characters were beautifully written and their lives fully explored. I highly recommend you read this book. I read a NetGalley version.

This book contains what at first appears to be separate stories of migration. In the lead-up to WWII, Simon is sent by his parents from Austria to England on the Kindertransport. In contemporary times, Anita is a blind child brought to the US to flee the violence in El Salvador, but she and her mother are separated at the US-Mexican border. The backstories are provided for both Simon and Anita, and eventually the two narratives converge. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if it had been focused on one story or the other, since they do not seem to fit together naturally. It is written in Allende’s beautifully flowing style. It connects past and present migration themes. I liked it but do not feel it is Allende’s best.

The Wind Knows My Name shows the struggles over time that children have faced- from the Holocaust to the most recent atrocities that have happened at the border of the United States. For a time it was difficult ( as a reader) to formulate a tie between the characters. It felt like I needed a notebook to keep track of the characters. It was frustrating to turn a page to see a new chapter start with yet another name. Eventually it flowed together. This reader felt as if too many events- past and present - were being addressed. The lives of Samuel and Anita, the early reckless life of the youthful Lectitia, then Nadine , Camille and then her son ( being portrayed as a twin of our former president). It was a lot. I kept reading to see how the book would end, but I am not sure my recommendation would be higher than a 6 out of 10. Thank you.

The Wind Knows My Name begins with Kristallnacht and ends with the current Covid-19 pandemic. Samuel Adler, a five-year-old Jewish boy, is sent to England in 1938 to hopefully survive the extermination of the Jews in Germany. The novel then moves to the present and weaves in the story of Marisol and Anita Diaz, a mother-daughter duo seeking refuge from personal danger in El Salvador. Other characters include Leticia Cordero (an aunt of Anita’s) who escaped El Salvador after the slaughter of her family. Selena Duran (a social worker) and Frank Angileri (an up-and-coming young lawyer) are working on getting asylum for the blind Anita.

This story blends the past and present in the characters’ stories, showing the effects of war and immigration on these two children, innocents who had nothing to do with the conflicts that led to their situations yet who suffer the most. Samuel and Anita survive—and do so well—with help from others, people who though they can’t replace the children’s missing families, can supply love and stability.

I found it disheartening to see that despite the eighty-year difference from
Kristallnacht to the pandemic, human nature has not changed. And Allende reveals this so well, showing the same atrocities being committed by the Germans, by El Salvadorans, and by Americans (Marisol and Anita are separated at the border thanks to the Machiavellian dictates of President Trump in separating families).

I think the book could have benefitted from being longer. At 272 pages, it seems too short to handle these characters’ stories in depth. I’d like less telling and more showing of their inner workings.

Like listening to a complicated symphony, this story brings notes together in dips and waves that eventually coalesce into it's ultimate conclusion. Isabel Allende brings the world to us in a history that spans the Holocaust years in Austria, the civil wars of El Salvador, and finally to the southern border of the United States where we find the heart of this story. How all of these historical things tie together isn't apparent at first. But patience brings it to us slowly in related notes and revelations all while the pages seem to turn themselves. As an American, it's always refreshing to read other viewpoints and to see our country the way others in the world do. We are a melting pot. We are made up of a multitude of different cultures with histories as varied as they can possibly be. Anita's story is all too common in the time we find ourselves in now. Her story's complicated path is outlined in every detail of this book though, even when we aren't directly hearing her specific history. I've read several of this author's books. They are all incredibly relevant and historically accurate while telling a slowly unfolding story with conclusions we can only guess.. We get behind-the-scenes views of historical events, most of which we have all heard about, and some that we haven't. But Ms. Allende makes it personal. And she makes us want to care. This book puts us into the middle of people's lives where we see the scenes unfold and then feel their every effect. We see it coming. We experience the aftermath. This is a worthy read that I can most highly recommend. Thank you to Random House - Ballantine and Netgalley for my copy. Pub date June 6, 2023.

This story is set in two eras, and several locations. It begins in Vienna on a night in November, the year is 1938. Kristallnacht. The night that Samuel’s father, Rudolph, disappears. His mother is afraid for his safety as the days grow ever more violent, and so she seeks to arrange for him to be transported on a Kindertransport train, which will take him to England. The only possessions he brings are his violin and a change of clothes.

Once he arrives, he is taken in by two women, who had been hoping for an older girl, someone to help around the house. It isn’t long before he is with another family, followed by another, and so on until he is placed in an orphanage outside of London, where he is not allowed to play his violin, so he composes his music in the privacy of his room, imagining the sounds. He writes to his parents when he has pneumonia and fears that he may die, addressing it to ’Herr Rudolph Adler und Frau Rachel Adler, Vienna, Austria, and a nurse gives it to a couple who visited him, Luke and Lidia Evans, a Quaker couple who were volunteers. By the time the war ended, Samuel was twelve years old.

The second time frame is set in 2019, in Arizona as a mother and daughter are on a train, leaving their home in El Salvador seeking the promise shared in those words in Emma Lazarus’s Petrarchan sonnet. They arrive just in time for the new policy of separating families. And so Anita Diaz is separated from her mother, left alone in a cage in a country where it seems no one cares. It isn’t enough that she is visually impaired, she now has no one. The one thing she does have, and returns to often, is her imagination, the place where the magical land of Azabahar can take her to another, happier, place. A peaceful sanctuary, if temporary, from her surroundings.

Selena Durán is a social worker who is drawn to these stories of children who have been separated from their families, but especially to Anita’s story. She is determined to help her, but knows it will not be an easy task, and so she reaches out to an attorney who soon becomes invested.

This is a beautifully shared story of horrific events that should have never happened, but continue to plague us.


Pub Date: 06 Jun 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books

At first, I was concerned that this was going to be a polemic on immigration. Silly me! In the hands of the outstanding storyteller, Isabel Allende, 65 years of refugee experiences are melded into a beautiful and moving narrative.

I have read and know much about the Holocaust and about the current happenings at our southern border, but little about the situation in El Salvador in the 1980s. Allende clearly shows the parallels between the experiences of the refugees of Vienna, of El Mazzotti, and of those fleeing the current horrors of Central and South America. She shows the strength and fortitude it takes to start all over, especially when you are a child, the on-going trauma, and the sacrifices people are willing to make for freedom.

I will be recommending this book to anyone and everyone who wishes to understand the current refugee crisis, as well as the plight of refugees in an historic context. In reading “The Wind Knows my Name“, one more fully comprehends the desperate and sorrowful decision to flee one’s home, particularly when it involves finding a safe haven for your child.

I am a huge fan of Isabel Allende’s engaging and encompassing style of storytelling. She is a master of her craft and I will always, always reach for her books with delight. The Wind Knows My Name is another gorgeously written tale that looks at the intricate web of a few extraordinary, ordinary lives.

So, why the three stars? This book was a bit too political and covers topics that still feel too raw for fiction (for me). Allende is passionate in a way that I admire, but I struggled with this book and it’s ties to (very) current affairs. Still, a well-imagined story that has all the hallmarks of classic Allende.

The Wind Knows My Name, by Isabel Allende

adventurous challenging emotional informative sad medium-paced
Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0

I love how Isabelle Allende writes. It’s nearly impossible for me to read through her books quickly because I want to soak in every sentence. When I received approval for an ARC of “the wind knows my name” I couldn’t wait to set aside time to sit and read.

The story tells of the experiences of several families from different eras who have migrated to flee war and other violence (some of which has been fueled by the US government). The trauma of the past is compounded by the trauma of the migration journey.

Children and parents are pulled apart. And thanks to social workers and others with big hearts like Selena, who cannot bear the cruelty, reconciliation is possible as well as appropriate legal representation.

I appreciate how Allende blends some of the storylines together. She reflects the reality that while the endings are not always happy, because of basic human kindness, people can experience the fullness of relationships even when unexpected.

Good book!

#TheWindKnowsMyName
#Netgalley

Isabell Allende is one of my favorite authors who I’ve been reading since high school. Her books have meant different things to me at different times. This book was no different in that aspect—this is an important book that spans time and isn’t just your regular historical fiction, but does intertwine with present day. I loved the alternating views, her beautiful prose, and the entire plot and story. As always, Allende’s characters were well drawn out
and complex. I absolutely loved this book!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

I love Isabell Allende! This felt like somewhat of a departure for her; I always think of historical fiction when her names comes to mind. This was part historical fiction, with beginning scenes set during Nazi-occupied Vienna. The story of Sam, sent on a kindertransport to England, mirrors the rest of the story. The present day is set in the world of undocumented Anita, who is separated from her mother after they cross into the US. We follow her story, along with the social worker and lawyer who are trying to find a safe place for her to live. Both stories intersect, although it took a while for them to converge. I was happy with the payoff, and loved spending time in her beautiful words.

Isabel Allende is a Queen, and this story will always stick with me. This story interweaves three stories in the past and present tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration from one child in Europe in World War II and another in present day in the covid pandemic. It is about conflicts in which children have no part but suffer the most. Allende teaches us that the wind knows us, no matter how hard and hopeless life may be, so we are never lost. She tells a powerful and heartbreaking story about three families: Samuel Adler, a Jew who through his mother's love, managed to escape Vienna during a time when the Jewish community was being exterminated, Lety, a migrant from El Salvador who lost her family during a massacre that plummeted her village, Marisol and Anita, a mother and daughter seeking asylum in the US after fleeing a violence-ridden El Salvador. The timelines were so easy to follow and I cared for these families so much. I learned a lot about immigration, and it is relevant to the times we are living in.