Another beautiful book by this author, granted very heavy. But the story flowed well though and call came together in the end.

this was a HEAVY book. I love Allende's writing, so it was all done with grace and beauty. I liked the different POVs presented, as it kept the story moving along.

A masterful historical and literary work from a talented voice. Isabel Allende leads us through difficulties in history and beauty in experiences with a master’s touch.

Like every Isabel Allende, The Wind Knows My Name develops rich characters and seemingly disparate stories that flow together and connect richly.

Samuel Adler is forced to leave his homeland of Austria after violence against Jewish citizens becomes too dangerous. He is taken to England without any of his family as a war orphan.

More recently, Anita and her mother Marisol flee danger in El Salvador only to be separated at the border by The United States’ cruel immigration policies. Anita is a nearly blind child as a result of a car accident. Separated from her mother, she is lost and doesn’t fit in with others in foster care.

Selena works for a nonprofit that deals with immigration, and she enlists the help of a lawyer named Frank. Together they try to find Marisol so they can reunite her with her daughter.

There are other characters, like Leticia, Frank’s wife Nadine, and Anita’s grandmother. All of them are distinct and well-defined, and when they come together it makes for a very satisfying story. I like her writing style very much and will continue to read her work.

Many thanks to Random House Group and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

NOTE: I received early access to this manuscript in exchange for writing an impartial review. Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books. Publication Date: June 6, 2023.

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors, in part because of her skillful use of language which so often reads more like poetry. I don’t think this particular novel is her best, although the prose is still top notch. What makes it worth reading though is her ability to create a handful of distinctive characters readers will care about. Awarded four stars on Goodreads.

THE WIND KNOWS MY NAME makes some interesting connections between seemingly disparate stories in different time periods. It begins with Kristallnacht in 1938 in Vienna. The Adlers, a Jewish family facing the growing Nazi threat, must protect their five-year-old son Samuel, a violin prodigy, at all cost. The parents make the unimaginable decision to send Samuel away to England on the now famous Kindertransport.

A second story line centers on Selena Durán, a social worker involved in immigration work along the southern border of the United States. Long engaged to a traditionally-minded truck driver, Selena’s true passion is her work — helping families reunite after government-imposed separation.

Then there’s seven-year-old Anita Diaz, a Salvadoran refugee Selena is working with, who has been separated from her mother by U.S. immigration officials. Frightened, traumatized, and shuffled around, Anita is nevertheless convinced she will soon be reunited with her mother.

There are a few notable supportive characters as well:

• An wealthy attorney who discovers that immigration law is more fulfilling that getting guilty rich people off the hook.
• A former Latin American immigrant now settled in San Francisco, completely dedicated to the elderly music professor whose home she cleans.
• A disgraced police officer providing security for a organization clouded in mystery.

Though Allende jumps from story to story (a technique I admit I DON’T love) -- and not connecting them all until the very end -- she does deal successfully with some BIG themes. She draws parallels between contemporary events that are widely accepted and similar ones in the past that are universally condemned. She makes human the plight of each refugee eager to enter the United States. And she makes a strong argument for the often unrecognized heroism of those people working behind the scenes on behalf of desperate people. Strongly recommended.

Book: The Winds Knows My Name
Author: Isabel Allende
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Pub Date: June 6, 2023
My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Story stars in Kristallnacht, Austria and the terrible actions against Jews.
Story features three families’ stories.
Samuel Adler, a Jew who through his mother's love, managed to escape Vienna during a time where the Jewish community was being exterminated,
Lety, a migrant from El Salvador who lost her family during a massacre that destroyed her village,
Marisol and Anita are a mother and daughter seeking asylum in the US after fleeing the violence in El Salvador.

~ WWII a child in Europe
~ Present day ~ A child during the Covid pandemic.
It is about the conflicts children suffer in which they really have no part.

As we follow several these families as see that they are bound by tragedy.
We get a look at the tragedies in El Salvador and have a better understand why the immigrants are trying to come to the US.

“The Wind Knows my Name” was chosen as a title as author ,Isabel Allende’s belief is that the wind knows us, no matter how hard and hopeless life may be.

This is my eighth Allende novel. Although all are great, my favorites are "Daughter of Fortune" and "The Japanese Lover"!

There is no doubt that Ms. Allende’s fans are going to loves this.

Want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine Books for granted me this early eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for June 6, 2023

Good historical fiction. I would recommend it to fans of Isabel Allende. I did not enjoy the dual timelines. I find myself enjoying one POV more than the other. I enjoyed Violetta more than this one as it focused on one titular character.

After forays into different literary forms, Isabel Allende returns to that which makes her such a special writer. The personal history portrayed against the backdrop of shattering events. The interweaving of histories that at first seem disparate, then seamlessly meshing. The fates of innocents caught in the crossfires, attempts to escape from Kristallnacht to horrendous massacres in El Salvador. And Allende incorporates her take on the effect of the cruelty of the tRump regime and their cluelessness regarding the COVID pandemic on the country and the world. Highly recommended.

I requested this book through NetGalley & luckily they approved my request. This is the 2nd book by Isabel Allende, I really enjoy her writing style but I will admit that the beginning of the story kind of dragged a bit for me. The story starts out with a little boy by the name of Samuel in Europe during World War II and goes back and forth and Anita a little girl in the present. Both of them go through terrible ordeals but the end up meeting in the present. Have the tissues nearby.

I have read almost all of Isabel Allende's books. There are very few that I found uninteresting. This is one of them.. There are two story lines that converge at the end of the book. I found the convergence awkward. While I understand and appreciate the topic, I did not love reading this book.

Isabel Allende presents a masterful novel that takes the reader from the Holocaust to the present immigration crisis. She brings these diverse times together with compassion. The Wind Knows My Name is a beautifully written book which will be a perfect choice for book club discussions. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine Books for granting my wish to read this book.

**A big thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for giving me an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

‘The Wind Knows My Name” was the first book I’ve read by Isabel Allende, but I don’t think it will be my last.

The book starts by telling us about Samuel Adler, a 5 year old boy living in Vienna Austria with his parents after the Nazi Occupation. After the night of broken glass (Kristallnacht), Samuel is one of the children allowed to move to England via Kindertransport, leaving his family behind with the hopes that they are one day reunited. We then meet Anita Diaz, an 8 year old girl who, in 2019, was separated from her mother after crossing the border into the US. Blind and having dealt with extreme loss in her short life, we learn about Anita’s strength as she awaits her fate in a new country. Alternating between past and present, we learn about these characters, about the characters who support both, and eventually see how these two stories converge.

This is a powerful, emotional story for all the reasons one may think. In both instances we see children who are put through unimaginable situations and live through them. For Samuel, we are introduced to his story through his parent’s eyes, seeing their love for him as they fear what their futures may look like. They are willing to give their lives to keep him safe, and one of the most heartbreaking scenes in this book for me was the moment they had to say goodbye. For Anita, we first learn her story through her social worker Selena and lawyer Frank. Anita tries to stay strong even though everything and everyone she knows has been taken from her, and it’s her strength that pushes Selena and Frank to work hard to give her the security and love she deserves.

I think tying the separation of families during WW2 and then during the border crisis was a work of genius. It’s not often that we think of these two situations together, but the loss that the children felt during both are more similar that we’d realize. I also think tying something so current and derisive with history almost everyone is familiar with adds a different level of compassion to the story of Anita.

My only challenge with the book is that I wish the way Samuel and Anita’s story was explained was more uniform. We learn of Samuel’s history from the start from the ones who loved him most, which as the reader helped me form an emotional attachment to the character almost immediately. With Anita, we learn her story secondhand from Selena and Frank, and while they are compassionate, it’s not quite enough. We hear Anita in her own voice, but while we see her strength we don’t learn until later what hardships she’s had to overcome. We don’t see any interaction between her and her mother or grandmother. It takes awhile for us to learn her full story, and I think that delay also delayed the emotional attachment I had to her character. To be sure, by the end I come to love her character, but if we learned about her life earlier in the book, I think I would have been even more invested in the story.

Overall, I think this book is a 3.5/5 star read for me. I think it’s unique, it’s relevant, and by the end I was invested in the characters and the outcome…it just took me awhile to get there for both of them. I would definitely recommend it to others, and will be looking at other Isabel Allende books for future reading.

A few seemingly unrelated story lines are beautifully weaved together to showcase the strength people have to overcome loss. A great read.

Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors and this book did not disappoint. She describes the struggle of immigrants attempting to enter the US that are being separated from their children. She begins with the story of Samuel who is transported out of Austria in 1938 to escape Nazis. He was put on a train and sent to the UK, never to see his family again. In 2019, Anita gets separated from her mother, while they are escaping from El Salvador. They make it to Nogales, and she and her mother get separated. Selena Duran is the social worker that is determined to keep her safe and find her mother. Unbelievably, these two stories become intertwined, and the story of what can happen when someone goes above and beyond to help a child is so heartwarming. Although there are some very difficult situations that are described, I appreciated the underlying positivity that came forth in this story. I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House books for giving me the opportunity to preview this book in exchange for an honest review.

Like so many of Allende's books, this one is an important read. The novel mainly takes place during the pandemic, though Samuel, one of our main characters, lost his parents in the Holocaust.Most of the novel evolves around our current border issues where children are separated from their parents, as we follow Anita, the young girl who is separated from her mother, and Selena, the young social worker, and Frank, the young attorney who helps with the asylum case.

Unlike other of Allende's novels, the prose in this novel is more factual and rushed, making it less pleasurable to read, at least for me, who missed her more rich sentences. There weren't many surprises in the novel, but at least the novel reminds us there are humane people who care about others during tumultuous times.

Another gorgeous story by Allende. Noone does women of Sputh America, women in general, better than Allende. She manages to find the beauty in the horrific. Told from the point of view if multiple immigrants, we see intoned lives, the power of survival and perseverance for the human spirit.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Isabel Allende can craft a tale, and bring strong women to life. And interesting men too, for that matter. This book weaves together three sympathetic characters, and a host of others, linking their tales of survival. We start off with a small Austrian boy, sent to England in the early days of WWII to escape the holocaust. Then a girl who survives the brutal massacre of her village in El Salvador in the early 1980's. Finally, one of the children forcibly separated from their parents crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. in the recent past. How these lives are woven together takes Allende and her readers to a place of compassion and humanity in spite of the violence done in the name of politics and greed. My only complaint is that she is not very subtle in expressing her point of view, more from an artistic standpoint than any disagreement with her.

Wonderful read and true to author style. Setting and characters a joy to follo.w.easy flowing story. A delight fior any group and will recommend to all and good club read

I couldn’t stop reading this! It starts with young Samuel in Austria at the beginning of WWII and Carrie’s the story to modern day USA. Anita is separated from her mom at the border while seeking asylum. This book was beautifully written and one of Allende’s best!

This story is about how two young children, one a boy in 1938, Austria, Samuel Adler, six years old and Jewish, had to leave his family during the war, and his mother had secured a spot for him on the last Kinder transport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom, where the children were fostered by families until they could be reunited with their own families.
Decades later in 2019 Anita Diaz a blind seven year old girl and her mother Marisol worked their way from El Salvador to Arizona fleeing danger in El Salvador, hoping to seek refuge in the USA. However, their arrival coincided with the new family separation policy, and Anita and her Mom were separated
This story takes us back and forth in these two lives as people along the way reach out to help them, care for them and love them.
This story is also about another Salvadorean woman Selena Duran who is the social worker, assigned to Anita. Selena Duran's family was killed in a massacre In El Salvador and she had fled there years ago, she is adamant on finding the separated parents for these children.
What a well told story, wonderful characters and settings throughout, you will get to experience wonderful connections in this story.
This Author is another one of my favorites, she writes beautifully and engages you in the story right away.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for a copy of this book.