Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Unfortunately, this was not, in my opinion, one of Allende's better stories. I felt the characters -- of which there are many -- had no dimensions and were totally lacking in emotion for their individual situations. As to the plot ... eh!?!

Not on my recommend list ... particularly when Ms. Allende has written so many good books.

The book begins with the Adler family in Vienna, 1938. Samuel is a Jewish six-year-old boy whose mother sends him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England to save his life after their family loses everything during the Night of Broken Glass.

In 1981, Leticia’s family (and whole village) is murdered during the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. Leticia and her father survive, so they flee the Salvadoran Civil War to seek refuge in the US.

Seven-year-old Anita Diaz is detained and separated from her mother in 2019 when they try to cross the US border. Dangerous men were after them in El Salvador, so her mother made the difficult decision to leave their country. Anita is blind, she’s alone at a camp and she doesn’t know what's going to happen to her or when will she see her mother again.

From Kristallnacht to a massacre in El Salvador, the main characters in this story have one thing in common: they are children who have endured inconceivable sufferings and that had to leave their country in order to survive. The characters are complex and real and their storylines are easy to follow. I love how Allende masterfully intertwined their lives at the end.

The book is rooted in tragic stories, but its message is one of hope, solidarity, resilience, empathy, and humanity.

This book is definitely going to my top ten this year and is honestly one of my favorite books by Isabel Allende.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and Netgalley for an advance copy. This book was published on June 6, 2023.

A beautiful story that weaves the lives of a man who escaped war world II via the kinder transport eventually making his way to America, with the lives of two women who escaped El Salvador to try to escape gangs and massacre.

A different, but great read. Like any other writings of Isabel Allende, this book will make you feel. It had a different feel than other books, but not in a bad way. Definitely worth reading!

I seem to have a consistent problem with Allende's writing. For the most part, I feel emotionally detached from her characters. In The Wind Knows My Name, I loved the early chapters about Samuel Adler's childhood and freely admit that they made me cry. The rest of the book, not so much, and the end of the story felt rushed and incomplete.

Allende's books are always so beautifully written and this is truly not an exception. I loved how the stories in this book and the characters were all effortlessly woven together. While the story covered is heavy, it's really a story of hope, healing, and resilience. I thought it was really powerful to compare the two stories of children being separated from their families due to inhumane policies.

This is a beautifully written book that explores the similar effects the evacuation of children in WWII and the separation of families trying to get into the US from El Salvador. Samuel Adler was about 6 when he was evacuated to London from Austria on the kindertransport and he never saw his family again. Eighty years later, we meet Anita who is separated from her mother leaving the violence of El Salvador behind. The two meet and it is a heart-warming story.

I always enjoy the stories of Isabelle Allende, but this has become one of my favorites. It is a historical fiction that sweeps eight decades and follows four main characters. Although in the beginning I wasn’t instantly engaged, as the stories weaved together I fell in love. Anita is the heart of this story and I found myself invested emotionally in her plight and yearning for her happy ending. This book was a slow burn for me, but one that left me with a content heart and much to think about. ❤️ Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC of this book.

Beautiful! There’s so much that I loved about this book. Personally, I am a big fan of books that jump around chronologically and character POV. This one was done is such a way where it almost felt like a puzzle, which was slightly slow at first but then impossible to pull myself away from at the end. I loved literally all the characters in this story (at least all of them that have a pov or a main role. There are some bad eggs that I don’t like!). Sweet old Mr Bogart and precious Leticia and, most of all, the wonderful Anita. It all ties together so nicely. It’s both happy and heartbreaking, but a reminder that we get through hard things together.

The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the influence of politics and Covid-19. It’s minor but enough to rub me the wrong way. It just didn’t add anything essential to the plot and it felt like a way for the author to insert an opinion (and I don’t think I’m the only person in this country that’s sick of talking about covid and politics).

Overall, magical. Life can be tremendously difficult, but there are wonderful people out there to help us through.

Excellent, powerful telling of the experiences and resulting trauma of children separated from their parents as the result of politics and violence. While the story explores the lives of several people, the most central were Samuel’s losses in the Holocaust and Anita’s loss of her mother at the Mexican border while trying to enter the U.S.

I appreciated the story and its ending. However, I had some frustration reading because the chapters were sometimes long and disparate, before the characters eventually met each other.. While each view was powerful, the flow of the story was uneven, and I had to skim earlier chapters to remind myself of some characters’ backstories.

This is an important story based on true events. Thank you to the author for writing this story. I received and appreciated an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

When you pick up an Isabel Allende novel you know you're in for some beautiful writing and a moving story. That's exactly what this is. I enjoyed the different narrators as well as the incredibly touching and heart-wrenching story. It did feel like there was a lot going on at times especially with all of the different stories being told but stick with, its worth it!

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende is the story about two people whose lives are so deeply affected by corruption, violence, and war. One character is a boy who was sent to England during World War II. He lost both his parents to the atrocities of war. He eventually went to live in the United States. The second main character is a six year old girl who attempts to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. In the process they are caught by immigration and the young girl is separated from her mother. What enduring pain is felt by both characters. As the plot develops the reader can sense the loss that is so deeply felt. To complicate matters further, the story takes place during COVID. when the United States is on lockdown. What happens to these two characters is certainly something that should be read and thought about long after the novel is finished. The Wind Knows My Name does not disappoint.

Allende's novels can be hit or miss for me. I loved her debut, as well as Daughter of Fortune, And many other of her historical fiction stories. This one falls in the category of not bad but not my favorite. I love the storyline of helping the undocumented child through the US immigration system and I think that's something many people should know more about, and I recommend this book for that reason. Personally, as someone who was an attorney for undocumented unaccompanied immigrant children, the story was all too familiar to me. I also just didn't really connect with the characters. Allende's writing style is kind of removed and descriptive, and it works in some books but falls flat in others.

Excellent! "The Wind Knows My Name" by Isabel Allende was a masterful novel, weaving together a boy, saved from the Nazi's and raised in England, along with a story, decades later, of a girl lost without her mother, after crossing the US-Mexican border illegally. Drawing parallels of innocent, lost children, and the brave, big hearted people which save them. Very powerful. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher. All opinions are my own.

This is another heartwarming and powerful story spun by Isabel Allende. She has woven together a story of two very different young people separated from their families, their cultures everything they were born into and forced to leave their native lands. She tells the stories of a young Jewish boy from Austria who lost his family in The Holocaust and a young Mexican girl caught in the immigration struggles into the US 60 years later.

A New Life in a New Land

Interesting and informative this is a story of immigrants and how it travels from one generation to another. The story of different generations of this immigrants and how they came to be and how their lives were impacted.

Sometimes sad, sometimes happy this is a story of different people, different times and different circumstances. It shows the desperation that some have to leave violence behind for a new life in a new land.

Each person and each case is different, but somehow connected to the others. It is a story of compassion and help for the less fortunate that wish to find peace.

Thanks to Isabel Allende for writing the story, to Random House Publishing for publishing it, and to NetGalley for providing me with a copy to read and review.

Random House Publishing 6-06-2023

Buchi Emecheta, a Nigerian novelist, once said that when she's writing a novel, the first thing she does is decide on the topic she wants the novel to address. This was in the context of a conversation (not with me) in which she explained that her novel The Joys of Motherhood was written to explore issues of family planning and population.

I'm just going to be honest here. The Wind Knows My Name is a lovely read that draws together historical threads in an important way. Allende has a topic. She always has a topic, and her topics are always important. But with her last few novels, I've been feeling that topic is overwhelming her characters. She's not being didactic exactly, but the characters no loner seem fleshed out in the delightful way they once did in her work.

Is this the case? I could be misremembering reading and loving some of her early works, but I don't think so. The last time I read one of her books and had the pleasure of sinking into a central character and getting to know her well, was with Maya's Notebook.

That said, I did enjoy reading The Wind Knows My Name, and I will be recommending it to others. The structure of this novel—presenting parallel threads dealing with the WWII kindertransport and the Trump administration family separation policy is powerful. They're not the same, and/but looking at them simultaneously helps readers observe and think in ways they might not otherwise do.

Read The Wind Knows My Name. You will find it worthwhile. But I'm so hoping for an upcoming novel from Allende that will be less episodic in structure. I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

The Wind Knows My Name has a beginning that sounded eerily familiar to something that I had read not too long ago, but that’s what happens when there is a saturated historical fiction genre that is teeming with World War II relics. I thought about putting it down, but there was something intriguing about this tale when it goes to the present timeline that kept me on the hook, and I am so glad that I stuck it out.

The novel jumps all over the place, the past, the present, and different characters in both, which can be a whirlwind keeping everyone straight. There were moments that I wondered how everything would tie in together, but once I saw the amazing tapestry that was woven with the author’s words and the stories she told, I was left in awe. Each individual story is interconnected in such a sweet a poetic way that its overall beauty is breathtaking.

Having family that lives near a major Mexican border, and family that is also Hispanic, made the whole migrant story hit me incredibly hard. I have seen first hand what these immigrants have to endure and my heart always aches for them. What kind of unimaginable horror did some have to face to want to embark on such a trek, leaving everything they know, and stepping blindly into the unknown, all to possibly be mistreated or left to die.

I know immigration is a hot button topic, but when you take out the politics and focus on the person it changes your perspective tremendously. What would you do if you or someone you loved were in this situation? What would you do? I feel like the author handled this part of the story incredibly well, and I think this would be a great novel to get this tough conversation started.

I am so glad this wasn’t just another World War II novel, and that it took a different approach of showing that what happened back then, with lives being torn apart and families being murdered, parallels what is happening now at our borders. This novel feels like a call to action as there really does need to be more done and I appreciated that there was a strong underlying message while also being a deep, yet entertaining read.

The Wind Knows My Name. Is so masterfully written and is such a powerful story that needed to be told, and most definitely needs to be heard.

Published simultaneously in Spanish and English; published in translation by Ballantine Books on June 6, 2023

The Wind Knows My Name tells the stories of three American immigrants who were forced to leave their homelands to escape oppression. A Jewish child who escaped from Austria in 1938 thrives in the US. A Salvadoran child who entered the US in 1969 makes a happy life for herself. During the pandemic, a child from El Salvador whose mother fled domestic violence is at risk of being deported. The story is a powerful reminder that America is shirking the role it once embraced as a sanctuary for those who are “yearning to be free.”

The novel begins with the stories of two children who survived attempts to exterminate their communities. Samuel Adler’s parents send him from Austria to Great Britain before they die in the Holocaust. Leticia Cordero is in a hospital, away from her village in El Salvador, when the village is destroyed by soldiers who believe that its inhabitants might be harboring insurgents. Her father, the lone survivor in her family, smuggles her into the US.

Samuel grows up to play the violin in the London Philharmonic, although his true love us jazz. On a visit to New Orleans, he meets the rebellious Nadine LeBlanc. They might not be a perfect fit, but she is the love of his life. They are together and apart at various stages of their lives, but Samuel explains that they “invested so much into our relationship that it was always worth saving.” The need to accept the inevitability of change is one of the novel’s themes.

As an adult, Leticia’s father and husband die within months of each other. A friend helps her begin a career as a cleaner.

The third set of principal characters includes Selena Durán, a social worker who deals with migrant children at the Mexican border. She recruits a prestigious law firm to help Anita Díaz, a blind child whose mother was denied asylum (the gunshot wound in her stomach wasn’t enough to prove her life was in danger). Anita is being held with other detained children while her lawyer, Frank Angileri, fights to win her asylum claim. Frank and Selena also search for Anita’s mother, who wasn’t officially deported but doesn’t seem to be in the country or in the refugee camps on the Mexican side of the border.

The lives of characters intersect as the novel progresses. Some fall in love. They cope with misfortune in different ways. Leticia smiles and rumbas and refuses to be gloomy. Anita has long talks with her dead sister.

The stories are tied together by the theme of oppression and survival. The Holocaust, the destruction of villages during the Salvadoran Civil War, the Maya genocide, the Salvadoran femicide, and the plight of refugees who are denied the right to make a case for entry into the US all contribute to that theme. These are big themes, but they are explored through the lens of small stories, personal stories, one way in which fiction distinguishes itself from history.

Perhaps connection is the novel’s strongest theme. Characters are connected by family bonds, shared experiences, and employment. Three characters who are not related to each other in any meaningful way eventually live together as a family, illustrating the changing nature of what the word “family” means. Samuel’s marriage to Nadine was long but unconventional; Selena resists the white-picket-fence domestic life that her fiancé envisions and might want a different kind of family.

Characters are also connected by shared values that so many Americans have lost, including the belief that the government should not separate families. As Selena remarks, too many Americans only value white children. Beginning with slavery, keeping nonwhite families intact has never been an American priority. It is nevertheless a priority to characters who are bonded by their shared experience of forced separation from parents.

Isabel Allende gives a fullness to her characters that should be expected from literary fiction. Samuel, near the end of his life, embraces the pandemic because it allows him “to distance himself from people he didn’t like and free himself from obligations that no longer interested him.” He disguises those standoffish traits with a façade of friendliness and a reputation for eccentricity that comes with his British accent. At the same time, Samuel is a compassionate man who is moved by the experiences of Leticia and Anita, experiences of being uprooted that parallel his own.

Although key characters are victimized by villainous people — human traffickers, men who rape and kill women — the villains are collateral characters in the story. The novel focuses on positive responses to evil rather than evildoers. This is a moving story about the things that should bring us together at a time when culture warriors strive to tear us apart. The Wind Knows My Name is a truly enriching novel that probably won’t be read by the people who would most benefit from its message

RECOMMENDED

Isabel Allende has quickly become my favorite translated author. Her novels always inform and enlighten, and I come away feeling as though I can make a difference in this world, however small.

This multi-generational novel delves into the heinous practice of separating children from their parents during wartime or political unrest. In the case of Kindertransport during WWII, parents did this out of necessity and desperation. In the case of the Zero-tolerance immigration policy of 2018, children were forcefully separated from their parents at our border. Allende approaches each situation with resolve and compassion, and I learned so much.

It fascinates me that I read stories about certain things in clusters, without ever meaning to. I just finished another novel that discussed this very same topic, and while it was a dystopian novel, it still brought to light all the times this has happened in our history😢.

This story took a little longer to piece together, by the author's design, but I also believe the translation made it slightly disjointed. But it is still a story well worth reading!

Many thanks to partner, @penguinrandomhouse for this #gifted early reader's copy! I'm always happy to read an Allende novel!