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

How to begin to describe this book… fantastic, amazing, and good don’t seem appropriate. Isabel Allende is a phenomenally skilled writer and everything she seems to write has a magical and special way of transporting me through the characters’ intricate journey.

This novel follows the effects forced immigration have on a child and how it is carried with them throughout their lives. The story interweaves many characters, but specifically two. The first starts in 1938, Austria. We follow 6 year old, Samuel Adler, who is secured a spot by his mother and neighbor on the last kinder transport train out of Austria. Which much reluctance, his mother puts him on the train with his beloved violin in hopes of finding her missing husband and then reuniting with Samuel in the future.

We also follow 7 year old, Anita Diaz who in 2019, flees the dangers of El Salvador with her mother. She is blind and seeking refuge with her mother in the U.S. Unfortunately, she is separated from her mother and left alone. She is very imaginative and find some solace in a magical world she has created in her mind. With the help of a tenacious social worker and a lawyer (who at first just wants to impress the social worker), they try and track the mother down. Instead, they find another family member already living in the U.S. and working for Mr. Samuel Adler.

I kept finding myself impatient trying to see how everyone’s story would connect. The patience paid off as I saw how the author interwove the stories together.

This novel conveys themes of forced immigration, the displacement of kids, diaspora, loss, courage, and resilience in the families that take on this mission to get their children to a safer place. The reader is left with some hope in humanity. Overall, this book is heart wrenching, thought provoking, and timely read about the suffering immigrants go through in search of a better life.

All characters are very likeable, and there are plenty of heartbreaking moments. As for the story, if you have never read books set during WWII, I’m sure that you will be impressed and very touched (the story starts in 1938 and ends in 2022 - and yes, the pandemic is mentioned).

This story, spanning across decades and continents, was a heartwarming and courageous display of what lengths parents will go to in order to protect their children.

Samuel Adler was a young boy when his father disappeared during Kristallnacht. His mother, determined to save her son, secured him a spot on the last train out of Nazi-occupied Austria that would take him to safety in the UK with nothing more than a change of clothes and his violin.

Eight decades later, Anita Diaz, a blind young girl fleeing El Salvador, is separated from her mother when she arrives in the United States. Her case is assigned to Selena Duran, a social worker who goes to extreme lengths to find her family and reunite them. Along with a lawyer at one of the top law firms in San Fransisco, Selena discovers that Anita has a relative living in the United States, and she just so happens to work for Samuel Adler.

When I first started reading this book, it felt like I was reading two completely different stories. And in a way I was, but the way that the author gradually tied them together, it brought so much more meaning to this emotional roller coaster of a tale. Though their lives began decades and countries apart, they shared the same experience of escaping from dangerous situations and surviving thanks to the love of their mothers.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and while it tugged at my heartstrings, it also left me with a wonderful feeling of hope. I definitely recommend it!

*Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing a copy of this book to review.*

Isabel Allende once again delivers a fascinating tale that spans from Kristallnacht in the beginning of World War II, which is the event that begins Samuel’s story, to the Covid-19 & the dehumanizing immigration crises at the border, which is where we meet Anita. Along the way, we meet Leticia, who emigrated from El Salvador after a massacre in the 1980s, and Selena and Frank, who advocate for little Anita’s asylum. These characters’ storylines are woven together

Allende tackles big ideas and big “feels” in this novel. She makes the reader wonder how people and governments can be so cruel and how survivors can be so courageous and capable of love. Allende uses these characters to examine the immigration policies and femicide of marginalized populations.

Because of the mature and complex issues , I would recommend this book for independent reading to students in AP English Literature & Composition. I also recommend this to readers who enjoy historical fiction and multiple storylines. I will recommend the title to my book club members.

I would like to thank Isabel Allende, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Isabell Allende has done it again. I love her writing. Easy to follow, understand and carry the story with you. The characters are all amazing. You really get involved in this story. Immigration is the big topic, but wonderfully done in this story. Makes you stop and think. I have recommended this book to all.

AHHHHHH!
I'm so thankful to PRH Audio, Ballantine Books, Netgalley, and Isabel Allende for granting me advanced audio, digital, and physical access to this sweet gem of book that held emotional weight that twisted into my with a sharp knife.

The Wind Knows My Name, the newest book from Isabel Allende is a captivating, heartbreaking tale wrapped in an absolutely gorgeous cover & it’s also a new favorite by this author.

Departing from her usual style of generational stories within a single family, Allende shares multiple POVs in different timelines providing thoughtful & unexpected connections (my favorite kind of story). In it we learn of Samuel Adler, a six-year-old Jewish boy in 1938, who is sent alone on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom after his family is torn apart. Fast-forward to 2019 in Arizona, Anita Diaz, a blind seven-year-old girl is separated from her mother after they arrive in the US attempting to flee danger in El Salvador. Other supporting characters are also featured, but I suggest you skip reading the synopsis and let the story unfold naturally.

Allende has written a very important story that shares the heartbreak endured during times of war & political unrest that causes forced separation between parent(s) and child(ren). True to Allende’s writing style, it’s a well-researched, beautifully written story that was riveting and wrought with emotion. It reminded me of Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult and if you read it, you’ll see why. The politics are heavy, the climatic scenes are dark, but ultimately this book will leave you with a lasting feeling of resilience, bravery, and hope.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an e-arc to read & review. And thank you to my library for getting a copy on pub day since my #netgalley game is off this summer. It’s available now & I’ve heard the audiobook narration is excellent.