I will read any book Isabel Allende wants to publish, forever. Her writing never fails to transport me to another time, place and culture, to teach me things I didn't know, and to make me think about the intricacies of cultural norms and relationships I otherwise wouldn't have. The Wind Knows My Name was, as always, beautifully written and filled with memorable characters. It was a bit more pointedly political in places than I felt it needed to be, but I suspect that's only because I agree with her point of view so thoroughly that I didn't need convincing.

Thank you Ballantine Books and Net Galley for the ARC! Isabel Allende's writing does not disappoint and her writing is beautiful, as you would expect. The story is so moving - I loved the evolution of the characters even though I found the different timelines a bit overwhelming at times. Really enjoyed this read and want to read it again!

A timely look at political turmoil and immigration. Allende does an exceptional job of drawing parallels to the experiences of her characters in two seemingly different time periods and historical moments. I was completely enthralled in all aspects of this novel and invested in each of the characters. I could not read it fast enough. I sincerely hope that this novel finds a wide audience. It is really great.

I enjoyed this book and I could not put it down. I really enjoyed the characters and the writing was really well done. It made you want to keep reading.

This is the second book I've read by Allende and certainly not the last. The storyline spans the 1940s (WWII) to 2022 (post-Covid) and the story moved quickly. I was worried that the storyline moved so quickly that I would not have time to get attached to the characters but that was not the case. You have plenty of time to fall in love with each character and will be moved by each character's life.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In Allende’s latest novel, she introduces us to Samuel, an octogenarian whose mother made the excruciating decision to send him out of Vienna on the Kindertransport to England in 1938.

We also meet 8 year old Anita who fled violence in El Salvador in 2019 with her mother only to be brutally separated from her in Nogales under Trump’s barbaric border reform laws.

While over 80 years separate these two situations, there are more parallels and commonalities not only in their life stories but that occurred in Nazi controlled Europe and corrupt, guerrilla infested El Salvador than one would want to believe.

Overall this book didn’t read like Allende wrote it. The characters were all so flat and the writing felt very listy and boring. Super disappointed.

The Wind Knows My Name is a very interesting story and very timely. I was very confused while reading this story because I couldn’t figure out how everything went together. But about 3/4 of the way in it all makes sense. At first it seems that there are all these people who have nothing in common. It was difficult to keep them all straight since the story bounces back and forth between different people.
Anita is a young girl who is separated from her mother at the southern boarder of the US while attempting to enter the US to seek refuge from a dangerous situation in their home in El Salvador. While this is a work of fiction, this type of thing is going on only too frequently with children being separated from their parents.
81 years earlier a young 5 year old Jewish boy, Samuel, was sent on the Kindertransport from Vienna to England to escape the Nazi stronghold. Samuel understands only too well what is feels like to be separated from your parents.
This is a story of a will to live and how to go on when life can be very hard.

Isabel Allende weaves an incredible, moving tale between two people whose lives intertwine despite the gap in time and location. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht, and he is sent to England to ensure his safety. Decades later, Anita Diaz is a seven-year-old who ends up alone in an immigrant detention camp when her mom disappears. When she ends up in the care of Samuel's caretaker, their stories and paths connect. Samuel can open up about what he lived through for the first time and identifies with Anita on a level he never imagined. This was an unimaginably heartwrenching read.

War time fiction is often my favorite version of historical fiction. The characters are faced with uncompromising big fateful decisions. Often what people face would not happen in peacetime. This story has is a parallel storyline of 2 wars in different decades and different parts of the world. Different races of people are involved but the human condition is the same. Children who are greatly loved and protected by theirs parents still end up orphaned due to shocking evil wartime events. I enjoyed characters and the twists in the story. It is fascinating to read how the author wove the lives of these characters together. Even though the evil events of wartime are present, so too is the hope and faith that good people still exist to help each through the troubled times.
Great for a book club. Highly recommended.
Thanks Net Galley and Ballentine Books for this ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

This is Anita’s story who was separated from her mother at the US border fleeing a violent madman in their home country of El Salvador. Anita’s eyesight is compromised due to a car accident when she was five so she’s placed in foster care to accommodate her specials needs. A social worker and an attorney work together to find solutions for Anita

A secondary thread in this book belongs to Leticia who came to America with her father after her El Salvadorian village was wiped out by corrupt policemen.

A third thread is the story of Rudolph Adler,a German refuge who was sent to America by his mother when he was six years old to escape the Holocaust. Allende deftly weaves these stories together with her beautiful prose. I can’t say, “and they lived happily ever after” but I can say that in spite of sounding like a predictable storyline, it’s a engaging and compelling read. It’s a five star book in my opinion.

Allende is a master storyteller and in this novel, she weaves a powerful story about what parents will do to save their children from the horrors of war. Connecting the dots between a Sam, a child of the Holocaust who was sent from his family in Austria to escape the Nazis and a young Anita, an El Salvadoran refugee separated from her mother at the US-Mexico border during the Covid pandemic. Sam, now an elderly man, faces his wounds of family separation from 90 years prior when circumstances enable him to forge a relationship with young Anita. While at times the connected dots between the multiple timelines and characters felt a little bit stretched to make the story work, I found this to be a very moving and compelling tale of family bonds, isolation, grief and the resilience that children of any war must develop to survive and potentially thrive in a world that prevents them from growing up without a parent to nurture and guide them. Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the ARC I received in exchange for my honest review.

Allende is one of my all-time favorite authors. But even with favorite authors, not every book is an exact fit. For me, this book presented too many vastly different storylines. I was very into the initial story and then felt wrenched out of it into a completely different one; and then the same thing happened again. It’s not a storytelling method that works well for me personally. If you love a book told through many POVs that take place in fractionally different times and places, but have common themes, this may be for you. That said I will continue to always try Allende’s work—I loved her last two books.

True to form Isabel Allende once again delivers a beautiful novel. In the beginning, two separate stories are told, each with its own timeline . The reader wonders how she is going to bring these parallel stories together. As the story emerges, one has a sense of urgency to see how this will happen. Focusing upon the women that are involved and the generations that they represent , one is amazed at how fluidly this all comes together.
This tender story touches all of your emotions. Ranging from heartbreak to anxiety, you will follow each character and become engaged in their lives. Focusing upon social issues that are current in today’s society, it is truly a novel that will appeal to all.

🎁📚𝓑𝓸𝓸𝓴 𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀 📚🎁
3.5/5🌟
I am a huge fan of Allende - 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑱𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 is one of my all time favorite books - and she is an exceptionally talented writer. This one however, was so ambitious, so over-stuffed, it became tedious, and I couldn’t wait to just get to the end. At its heart, it’s a beautiful story of the sacrifices a mother will make for her child (one character was evacuated from Austria to England via the Kinderstransport during WWII, never to see his mother again; another was smuggled over the US border where the two were separated by authorities), and what a difference action on behalf of a group can make to a single person. Allende also tackles the themes of misogyny, trauma, family dynamics, politics in relation to immigration and Covid…and more. The characters and their stories are braided together, and she pays beautiful homage to those working tirelessly for the rights of others, but I felt like I was reading two or three different novels at once! Many thanks to @netgalley and @ballantinebooks and @isabelallende for an advanced copy of this novel.

The Wind Knows My Name
by Isabel Allende
(The Review is based on an ARC sent to me by NetGalley)

The Wind Knows My Name is a tale of two child immigrants--- a boy who escapes Nazi occupied Vienna in 1938 and a girl who escapes military gangs in El Salvador in 2019.

Samuel Adler is a 5-year-old Jewish boy in Vienna on Nov. 9, 1938,
when his father disappears during the Nazi purge of Kristallnacht. Samuel's mother manages to evacuate him to England. He travels alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes, his violin and hopes for reunion with his parents.
Leticia Cordero has ended up (illegally) after narrowly surviving the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Leticia will play an important part in the children’s lives.
In alternating chapters, Allende also describes Anita Díaz, a 7-year-old girl separated from her mother in a detention facility after crossing illegally into Arizona.
Allende moves the story back and forth between Europe and the United States, switches between the past and present, as two very different children in very different places and circumstances search for the safety of home and family.
Through a series of circumstances, Samuel and Anita eventually meet through Leticia.
Allende delivers a powerful novel about war and immigration and the protagonists’ quest to find safety and a place to call home.

I will definitely have a "book hangover" and miss these characters for a few days.

That said, this is not a perfect book. Plot points are a bit too manipulated feeling and too coincidental for my liking. There are some parts that are not developed well and others that feel flat and droning just to give information (show, don't tell, please) and I really did not like (or believe) the relationship between Frank and Selena.

But overall, I found it a wonderful novel and thus was willing to excuse the shortcomings. I was able to completely engage in all the different stories - Samuel, Selena, Frank, and of course, Anita. I loved being along with each of their journeys and Allende's writing connected with me in deep and sometimes profound ways. I definitely had some emotional moments that I had to go back and reread through tears.

I'd definitely recommend the book and might consider suggesting it to the right student - most of my HS students aren't mature enough to really enjoy it, nor would most be willing to work hard enough to get through the slower or more dense sections.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

In her compassionate novel, Allende draws powerful parallels between child migrants in 1938 Austria and at America’s southern border in 2019, evoking the tragic universality of war’s innocent young victims. Samuel Adler is only five when his desperate mother, her home and world destroyed during Kristallnacht in Vienna, places him on a Kindertransport train to England. The antisemitic violence his family experiences feels visceral and immediate on the page.

Decades later, in 1981, Leticia Cordero arrives in the United States with her father, the sole survivors of their immediate family after a massacre in their El Salvadoran village. Later, in 2019, seven-year-old Anita Díaz and her mother, Marisol, are victims of the Trump administration’s family separation policies after they cross from Mexico into Arizona, fleeing a threatening home environment in El Salvador. All these stories converge during the pandemic, starting when social worker Selena Durán gets lawyer Frank Angileri to take Anita’s case pro bono and help reunite her with Marisol, who may have been deported. By then, Samuel is an 86-year-old widower in San Francisco, and if anyone can relate to Anita’s plight firsthand, he can.

Frank’s rapid transformation from suave would-be seducer (he finds Selena very attractive) to conscientious human rights defender is too convenient, and their conversations about immigration policies seem designed to feed readers background information. But all the viewpoints alternate smoothly, and Allende has a particularly delicate touch in depicting children. Samuel’s journey from Austria to England to America intertwines with his love for music, while young Anita, who is blind, retreats into an imaginary world to cope. Not only does Allende depict the heroic acts people undertake to help underage migrants, but she underscores the courage of those who do so at great risk to themselves.

Isabel Allende has established herself as an amazing writer, and she continues to prove why that is the case.
This story is painful to read due to how well written the story is. Immigration and separation is at the core of this book, and Allende makes you feel the pain.

I will say that a more refined connection between the main characters would've really elevated this to 5 stars.

Allende is a master of telling the tales of characters making an exodus from Europe to South and Central America, masterfully weaving together a story from two continents. Her newest novel, The Wind Knows My Name, connects the story of a boy escaping the Holocaust in Austria with the story of a girl fleeing violence in El Salvador. From the beginning, I anticipated seeing just how their stories would intersect and loved when I found out how they did.

The book has several narrators and the chapters alternate between them. The story reaches into the COVID-19 era, and it brought back memories of quarantine and isolation. I appreciated how she captured, without spending too much time, what isolation was like in 2020.

Allende is one of my favorite authors, and I’ll happily read all her future releases.

My thanks to Netgalley and Ballantine for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. I liked this book! WOW. It really was heart breaking at some parts. Children separated from their families is still happening today so it was a little hard to digest and really made you think about your own life