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The Wind Knows My Name Kindle Edition

by Isabel Allende (Author), Frances Riddle (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 6,786 ratings

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration” (People), from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta

“Timely, provocative . . . emotionally satisfying . . . [a story about] the kindness of strangers who become family.”—The New York Times Book Review

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita’s mother.

Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for A Long Petal of the Sea

“[Isabel Allende] has deftly woven fact and fiction, history and memory, to create . . . one of the strongest and most affecting works in her long career.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A Long Petal of the Sea gets to the heart of immigrant struggle. . . . Allende reminds us that these issues, at their core, are made up of individuals and their love stories.”—USA Today

“A historical love story penned in the lush and propulsive prose familiar to Allende’s millions of fans worldwide, it . . . feels excitingly new and unerringly timely for this international superstar of an author.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for Violeta

“Fans of Allende’s generation-spanning family epics are in for a treat. . . . Violeta’s personal loves and tragedies intertwine with decades of Latin American political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and social change.”—The Washington Post

“Violeta recalls Allende’s best known and highly successful novel, The House of Spirits, which weaves together the personal and the political in a saga stretching across decades.”—Associated Press

“An immersive saga about a passion-filled life.”—People

Review

“[An] homage to parents who make unthinkable decisions to save their little ones, and to kids who survive some of the toughest challenges imaginable.”—Associated Press

“This beloved author transports us to two dark periods in history: Nazi-overrun Vienna in 1938 and the current dire situation at the border between the United States and Mexico. . . . Both stories are rich enough to carry the weight of one novel, but Allende expertly intertwines them. Employing her signature touch of magical realism, she wraps us in a compassionate story that reminds us ‘we could all just as easily find ourselves in similar situations.’”—The Washington Post

“Allende’s artistry shapes a lyrical romanticism around social political history and global turmoil . . . [Her dialogue is] current, relevant and real. Our civic discourse is centered by a multitude of voices talking about two things—immigration and identity—who belongs and who doesn't, and how to care for the dispossessed. In Allende’s version healing is possible, because empathy is a hopeful, albeit inconsistent, follower of migration.”—NPR

“[Allende is] the queen of magic realism.”—BBC

“It feels something like a modern version of The Secret Garden: lost, grieving people finding joy and hope with each other, with a touch of magic. Beautiful and moving . . . draws parallels between humanitarian crises in different times and places in a way that feels deeply personal.”—Book Riot

“The Wind Knows My Name is a treat for fans of Kristin Hannah, Christina Baker Kline, and Julia Alvarez,all authors who understand that historyalways affects current events.”—Virtuoso, The Magazine

“Allende is always a must read and readers will queue for her latest mix of history, suspense, emotional insight, social commentary, mysticism, wit, and tenderness.”—Booklist

“Powerful . . . Allende finds real depth in her characters, especially when portraying their sacrifices. This authentic and emotionally harrowing work is a triumphant return to form.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Artist

Isabel Allende

About the Author

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. Her books have been translated into more than forty-two languages and have sold more than seventy-four million copies worldwide. She lives in California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Adlers

Vienna, November 1938

A sense of misfortune hung in the air. From the early morning hours, a menacing breeze had swept through the streets, whistling between the buildings, forcing its way in through the cracks under doors and windows.

“Just winter settling in,” Rudolph Adler murmured to himself in an attempt to lighten his mood. But he couldn’t blame the weather for the tightness in his chest, which he’d felt for several months now.

The stench of fear, like rust and rotting garbage, clung to his nostrils; neither his pipe tobacco nor his citrus-scented aftershave lotion could mask it. That afternoon, the stink of dread stirred up by the wind was suffocating, making him feel dizzy and nauseous. He decided to turn away the patients left in his waiting room and close up early. Surprised, his assistant asked if he was ill. She’d worked with the doctor for eleven years and had never known him to shirk his duties; he was a punctual, methodical man.

“Nothing serious, only a cold, Frau Goldberg. I’ll go home and rest,” he answered.

They tidied the office and disinfected the instruments, then said goodbye at the door as they did every evening, neither suspecting that they’d never see each other again. Frau Goldberg headed to the streetcar stop and Rudolph Adler walked the few blocks to the pharmacy at his usual brisk pace, hat in one hand and doctor’s bag in the other, his shoulders hunched. The sidewalk was damp and the sky cloudy; it had been drizzly and he predicted they’d soon see one of those autumn rainstorms that always caught him unawares, without an umbrella. He’d walked those streets a thousand times and knew them by memory, but he never stopped admiring his city, one of the prettiest places in the world with its Baroque and Art Nouveau buildings coexisting harmoniously, the majestic trees that had begun dropping their leaves, the equestrian statue in the neighborhood square, the bakery’s window display with its spread of delicate pastries, and the antiques shop crammed with curiosities. But that afternoon he barely raised his eyes from the pavement. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The troubling rumors had begun that morning with news of an assault in Paris: a German diplomat shot five times and killed by a young man, a Polish Jew. Spokespersons for the Third Reich called for revenge.

Since that March, when Germany had annexed Austria and the Nazi Wehrmacht paraded its military pomp and circumstance through the heart of Vienna to a cheering, jubilant crowd, Rudolph Adler had been plagued with fear. His worries had begun a few years prior and only worsened as Nazi power was consolidated through increased financing and a growing stockpile of weapons. Hitler used terror as a political tactic, taking advantage of discontent over economic woes after the humiliating defeat in the Great War and the Great Depression in 1929. In 1934, Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated in a failed government coup, and since then eight hundred others had been killed in various attacks. The Nazis intimidated their detractors, provoked disturbance, and pushed Austria to the brink of civil war. At the start of 1938, internal violence was so untenable that Germany, from the other side of the border, exerted pressure to annex the troubled country as one of its provinces. Despite the concessions that the Austrian government had made to German demands, Hitler ordered an invasion. The Nazi party had laid the groundwork for the invading force to be met with open arms by the majority of the population. The Austrian government surrendered and two days later Hitler himself entered Vienna, triumphant. The Nazis quickly seized total control. Opposition was declared illegal. German laws and SS and Gestapo oppression, as well as antisemitic policies, went into immediate effect.

Rudolph’s wife, Rachel, who had always been rational and practical, without the slightest tendency toward catastrophic thinking, was now almost paralyzed with anxiety and only functioned with the help of medication. They both tried to keep their son, Samuel, in the dark about what was happening, to protect his innocence, but the boy, who was about to turn six, had the maturity of an adult; he observed, listened, and understood without asking questions. Rudolph had initially prescribed his wife the tranquilizers he used to treat anxious patients, but when they seemed to have no effect, he turned to other, more powerful drops, which he obtained in opaque unmarked bottles. He could’ve used the sedatives as much as his wife, but he would not risk jeopardizing his professional acumen.

The drops were provided to him in secret by Peter Steiner, a pharmacist and friend of many years. Adler was the only doctor Steiner trusted with his own family’s health, and no government decree forbidding interaction between Aryans and Jews could change the respect they had for each other. In recent months, however, Steiner had been forced to avoid Adler in public, since he couldn’t afford any trouble with the neighborhood Nazi committee. In the past, they’d played thousands of games of poker and chess, exchanged books and newspapers, and taken regular hiking and fishing trips together to escape their wives, as they said jokingly, and in Steiner’s case to flee from his horde of children. Now Adler no longer participated in the poker games in the back room of Steiner’s pharmacy. The pharmacist met Adler at the back door of his shop and provided the medication for Rachel without registering it on the books.

Before the annexation, Peter Steiner had never questioned Adler’s roots and considered the doctor to be just as Austrian as he was. He knew the family was Jewish, as were 190,000 other Austrian citizens, but that meant nothing to him. He was agnostic; the Christianity he ’d been raised with seemed to him as irrational as all other religions, and he knew that Rudolph Adler felt the same way, though he upheld some Jewish customs out of respect for his wife. Rachel felt it was important that their son be raised in the Jewish community and traditions. On Friday evenings, the Steiners were often invited to Shabbat at the Adler home. Rachel and Leah, her sister-in-law, spared no detail: the best table linens, new candles, the fish recipe that had been passed down from a grandmother, fresh loaves of bread, and abundant wine. Rachel was close to Leah, who had been widowed young and had no children. Leah was devoted to her brother Rudolph’s small family, and although Rachel begged the woman to move in with them, she insisted on living alone, visiting often. Leah was sociable and participated in various programs at the synagogue to help the neediest members of the community. Rudolph was the only brother she had left, since the youngest had emigrated to a kibbutz in Palestine, and Samuel was her only nephew. Rudolph presided over the Shabbat prayer, as was expected of him as head of household. With his hands on Samuel’s head, he asked God to bless and protect him, to grant him grace and peace. On more than one occasion Rachel caught a wink exchanged between her husband and Peter Steiner after the prayer, but she let it slide, knowing it wasn’t meant in mockery but merely a gesture of complicity between two nonbelievers.

The Adlers belonged to the secular and educated middle class that characterized Viennese society in general and Jewish society in particular. Rudolph had explained to Peter that for centuries his people had been discriminated against, persecuted, and expelled from many lands, which was why they valued education over material wealth. They could be robbed of their belongings, as had occurred repeatedly throughout history, but no one could take away their intellectual assets. The title of doctor was more highly prized than a fortune in the bank. Rudolph came from a family of craftsmen, proud to count a physician among them. The profession afforded him prestige and authority, though in his case it indeed did not translate to material wealth. Rudolph Adler was not a sought-after surgeon or a professor at the storied University of Vienna, but a family physician, hard-working and generous, who treated more than half of his patients for free.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BDD1HJX3
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (June 6, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 6, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2649 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 261 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #16,832 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #16 in Hispanic American Literature
- #21 in Hispanic American Literature & Fiction
- #32 in Literary Sagas

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4.3 6,786 ratings

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Isabel Allende
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Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, having sold more than seventy-seven million books. Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-six bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, and The Wind Knows My Name.
In 1996, following the death of her daughter, Paula, Allende established a charitable foundation in her honor. The foundation has awarded grants to more than one hundred nonprofits worldwide, delivering life-changing care to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.
In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and in 2018 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Allende lives in California.
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Frances Riddle
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P. Blevins

fantastic

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2024

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What a powerful story that Isabel Allende tells in her book. She delves into the psyche of children who have been abandoned by their parents through no fault of their parents or themselves. Circumstances just forced them apart and kept them apart. The child has to find a way to deal with this feeling of abandonment even if they understand the reasons behind the abandonment. Isabel Allende shows how the children deal with this loss and how they accept or deny the good intentions of other adults around them who claim to want to help.
Anita had a hard life in El Salvador before she and her mother left to attempt to gain refuge in America. When she was six, she lost her sight and her little sister in a car accident. She was left to be raised by her mother and grandmother. A cruel and dangerous man took interest in her mother and forced them to flee. At the border to the United States, Anita and her mother were separated. A social worker, Selena, took Anita's case and tried to get a new lawyer, Frank, interested in helping get Anita reinstated with her mother. Selena follows Anita to foster care keeping up her spirits as Frank looks for a solution. Eventually, a relative is found to place Anita with in the US, getting her out of the foster care system.
Anita's relative, Lety works for the elderly Samuel Adler, an elderly retired professor. With Covid hitting, she moved into the mansion to take care of the house and Samuel during the lockdown. When Selena locates Lety, Samuel insists she agree to take charge of Anita. Samuel did this because he understood the feelings Anita would have at seemingly being abandoned as he was a survivor of the Kindertransport. The problems Anita is having are almost identical to the problems he had as a child.
The longer time passes, the more complicated Anita's life becomes. What will happen when she realizes her mother will not be coming back.
The book is addictive and completely enthralling.

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Gabrielle

A good read touching important social causes about children separated from their parents

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2024

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We can tell that Allende wanted to bring awareness to important social causes with her story, namely the inhuman act of separating children from their parents. I believe she did good to this cause, leveraging her notoriety for the message to be heard and using her prose to deliver the touching intertwined stories of Anita, Samuel, Leiticia, Frank and Selena.
I gave only 4 stars because I felt the story lacked depth. The story spans many decades and goes very quickly, so quickly that I sometimes wondered if I had missed something or skipped a chapter. For example, a chapter ends with some event in Samuel and Nadine's life, and a couple of chapters later when we get back to Samuel's story, it seems like this event never happened until much later it is clarified that the event indeed happened and more details are given as to why the reader felt lost. There are several such instances where the reader gets lost, but not in a good way.
I also found that some of the dialogues didn't flow naturally, especially when the issues of kid separation and immigration are discussed. It seemed more like facts spelled out through the mouths of the characters, and although it made sense that such and such characters would discuss these issues, it didn't feel natural.
It's definitely not a book I would read again, especially compared to other books by Allende (I especially like the recent Violeta).

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Susan Jacobs

The Border Crisis Becomes Heart Wrenching

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2024

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I have always loved anything Isobel Allende wrote—— but in the past most of her novels were fiction. In this book she tells a story that is woven out of the border crisis of the last decade
A must read

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2024

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I am usually such a big fan of Isabel Allende, but the parallel between Nazis and American border guards was a stretch, in my opinion. I did appreciate her theme of the ongoing psychological trauma inflicted on“lost” children, but the coincidences in the narrative were not believable. I give it a c+

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Rochelle Fox

one of the best books that I’ve read in a while!

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2024

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This story is so well-written and touching on a deeply personal level. As someone who is a direct descendant of Holocaust survivors and victims, I found this story to be a powerful narrative of the horrors that happened back then… and that continue to happen in our modern world, especially to women and children. I read this book in 2 days… I found myself so fascinated with and invested in each of characters and the families and all that they endure. This book is a beautifully tragic tale of trauma and grief, but it’s also a story of hope and healing. Highly recommend it.

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Maureen Brode

Does the Wind offer an answer?

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2024

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The issue of illegal immigration is front and foremost in the news everyday, for days on end in this relatively new year, 2024. It has been for years. Reading this novel, allowed me to look at a small bit of the issue and to feel some compassion, empathy, and connection to it. I don’t know how this situation will ever be rectified, but I suppose we must take each case separately. Anita’s story was unique and deserving of sympathy…the larger cast of characters contributed to a moving narrative but is Truth stranger than Fiction or vice versa. Have to mull on my thoughts some more.

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Roni Love

Blown by the Wind

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2024

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Isabel Allende lent her special gifts as an author to highlight the plight of immigrants, especially of children, to light in a very relatable story of connectivity, uniting the lives of the sometimes disparate characters of this story into a quilt of colorful & heartfelt harmony…blown by the wind!

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2024

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I liked the fact that this just wasn't a story. It told the truth about what the US immigration practices have done to thousands who have come here looking for hope and help.

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Esme

excellent read

Reviewed in Canada on September 14, 2023

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I have always loved Allende’s books and this one did not disappoint. Several stories of immigration intertwine to paint a compassionate view of this difficult reality. Highly recommend.

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Ellen Gilhuys-Fransoonk

another treasure from Isabel Allende

Reviewed in France on March 24, 2024

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As with all of her books, Isabel Allende managed to draw me into this magical world and step out of mine for a little while. For that I am eternally grateful.

Jose Antonio

A wonderful story.

Reviewed in Spain on December 18, 2023

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The author knows how to put you in the shoes of their characters. Also, it's a way to show us the tragic reality that millions of refugees suffer around the world.

Secret Spi

Separation and connection

Reviewed in Germany on September 26, 2023

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Isabel Allende’s latest novel takes the subject of refugees, the displaced and deported, those fleeing violence and persecution, with a particular focus on children separated from parents. Some of the main characters are a young boy who is taken to safety from Vienna in 1938 via the Kindertransport, a girl escaping with her father from El Salvador in 1981 and a blind child separated from her mother at the Southern US border in more recent times.

The novel’s theme is the connectedness of people suffering similar experiences and the kindness and humanity of those who help them. The story sweeps across continents and decades as history, sadly, keeps repeating itself. Allende, as usual, is very adept at drawing together the human threads that bind us and the story is very touching in places. I found the first section particularly strong in this respect and was reminded of “Night Falls on the City” by Sarah Gainham.

Although the story kept my interest, the style seemed different to earlier novels. There was rather too much information-dumping for my liking, often through conversation, which felt stilted. In addition, there’s an underlying worthy and preachy feel to the writing and the beautiful magical quality of earlier novels is all-but-absent.

Enjoyable enough, but not one of the author’s best.

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MM Reviewer

Stirring, poignant, incomprehensible, and deeply moving.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 3, 2023

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Powerful, eloquent, passionate, distressing, and for the most part ‘real’ which makes ‘The wind knows my name’ such a thought provoking and affecting story.

Isabel Allende is a formidable writer. Her beautifully written books, eloquent prose and vivid descriptions of time, place and people make her one of my favourite Historical Fiction authors. That is before I come to the historical accuracy of many of the events and places she captures in her stories and weaves through the lives of the characters and period, which is superb.

Although, with one negative I regret to bring this one down to a 4 stars because this felt too much of a ‘factual’ account, at times, when it came to relaying the historical events which lost its emotional power in the storytelling but not in the power of the story itself. How could you not succumb to emotion and feel empathy for the many displaced people in this story involving events of WWII and in Mexico with the massacre of innocent men, women, and children, El Mozote.

The Plot and Storyline - Vienna, one of Europe’s most intriguing cities, and the birthplace of some of the worlds most famous musicians, philosopher’s, and scientists – most of them Jewish, is the setting for the first part of the story. Although far from feasting on its cultural heritage we witness Vienna descend into war as it becomes contaminated with extreme racism against the Jewish people.

A gifted boy, called Samuel, is forced to separate from his parents as part of the ‘kindertransport’, a scheme to get children from war torn cities and into safety. Nevertheless it was a traumatic decision so many parents were faced with. For example over 10,000 children really did travel to the UK as part of this scheme (plus many to other European countries) in an attempt to save them from the concentration camps.

Unable to settle with any UK family at first, Samuel is taken in by the Evans family who he lovingly describes in his story as his ‘family in spirit’. Fascinated by jazz and freedom and the energy of it, Samuel travels to the US at 25.

“He needed to hear Jazz live, to get lost in its syncopated rhythms, its melancholic blues, the irresistible force of the instruments conversing among themselves, calling out to him..” I can sense that!!!

Samuel meets, marries, and divorces Nadine, not once but three times although his heart will remain hers for all eternity. A woman who was unpredictable, explosive, and passionate. A woman who possessed an intuitive intelligence that prevented her from following a conventional life, but a woman he loved and admired but could not control.

The second story is that of Anita, who is a blind asylum seeker from Mexico who through much of the story is trying to locate her mother who she was separated from under a government policy affecting anyone entering the US illegally. This is when we meet the other key characters who add so much to the story. Selena who works closely with displaced families and children and Frank, a lawyer, who becomes so involved in Anita’s case.

Inevitably the lives of the characters become entwined in some way and makes this a story of regret but also hope. One of pain but also of love, self-sacrifice, and humanity.

Review and Comments - Yes, a deeply moving human story, one that is ambitious to take on two monumental events in history for all the wrong reasons but non the less through these stories we also get to celebrate the best of human nature, not just dam the actions of those who care little of humanity. Yet through history, regretfully, some have learned so little, all we have to do is look at the devastating invasion of Ukraine and the displacement and slaughter of the innocence there.

Storyline and Plot ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The plot was gripping and written at a pace that controlled and intensified the feelings this book stirred in me. In addition, many of the themes felt persuasive rather than exaggerated, but real and relevant.

Main Characters ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wonderful characters. The way in which all these characters were depicted in the book was fantastic, everyone added to the story. However, I do confess to relating to Samuel and Nadine a little more and that is not because I knew more of the real events that affected them. I felt this was the stronger of the two storylines, and this is where I come to the storytelling.

Storytelling ⭐⭐⭐ I felt we lived through Samuel’s story but we were ‘told’ of Anita’s and some of its became too ‘factual’. As a result, I feel it lost some of the emotion which normally Allende invokes so well. So, reading the authors note at the end, it was no surprise that the Allende had met with so many victims from Mexico who told their story, and it felt to me, Allende told theirs in this book. All of this is relevant, touching and heart breaking but for a fictional novel I think it needs to be woven into the story more. I felt there was two different styles at play in the storytelling.

Writing Style ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Allende’s prose is outstanding and as a reader you could include an endless amount of quotes from her books. Vivid, elegant, lyrical, and accomplished writing.

Whilst I might have preferred that some parts of the story had less of a factual style of writing that removed some emotion and passion in the story, this was a sublime book overall. Who would not be touched by the fact that many of these events were real, traumatic, and heart-breaking for millions of people.

“Here is my secret. Its quite simple. One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

A beautifully written story where intolerance, and prejudice is often overshadowed with kindness, hope, and courage nevertheless it is still brutal. An epic story that is told with sentiment but is not emotional, extravagant in its expanse of events and years but simple in its message through time and one that is beautifully crafted but sensitive in its delivery. A story that is stripped back from exaggeration, elaborate themes, and complex characters because the events and human stories say enough.

I would not hesitate in recommending, and as Allende says “Write what should not be forgotten.” and for all those who have died in unjust wars like in Ukraine today "The wind knows your name".

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