The Wind Knows My Name

Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle. Allende’s new novel—her 27th(!!)—begins in Vienna on Kristallnacht, 1938. Following this night of antisemitic terror, a Jewish mother puts her five-year-old son on a rescue train bound for England. She will never see him again. A parallel narrative begins in 2019 in El Salvador, where a mother flees for her life with her 7-year-old daughter, only for mother and child to be separated at the U.S. border. In unexpectedly long chapters, Allende slowly weaves these stories together like a fine tapestry. I expect this novel will be criticized for being heavy-handed, but I couldn’t wait to discover what would happen next, and found the tidy ending immensely satisfying. For fans of Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea and Patricia Engel’s Infinite Country.