The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Allende, Isabel. The Wind Knows My Name. Ballantine Books, June 6, 2023. Kindle.

The Wind Knows My Name, a historical fiction novel by Isabel Allende, weaves together the stories of a survivor of the Holocaust, a survivor of the El Mozote massacre, and a child separated from her mother at the United States border to illustrate that families sometimes grow from shared experiences. Allende addresses the trauma suffered by children when they are taken from their families by war, cruel immigration policies, and other atrocities. Additionally, the novel offers hope as Allende highlights the dedicated volunteers working with displaced children to help reunite them with their families and ensure that they can remain in a place of safety.

Samuel Adler was only six years old when his mother, Rachel, sent him to England on the Kindertransport to keep him safe from Hitler’s Nazi regime in their homeland of Austria. Samuel’s father was fatally injured on Kristallnacht and died a few days later in a concentration camp. Samuel’s mother was unable to procure a visa to allow her to leave Austria. She was hidden from the Nazis first by a retired military officer and then by a friend of the family for years, but was discovered during a raid and sent to a concentration camp where she died.

Samuel, who was bounced around from family to family in England because he was small and often sick, lived with the belief that his parents were coming for him. After he almost died of pneumonia in an orphanage, a Quaker couple took him home with them. Samuel dedicated his life to music and to Nadine LeBlanc, his wife, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship.

Nearly fifty years later, Leticia Cordero and her father were the only ones who survived the El Mozote massacre because he had taken Leticia to the hospital for emergency surgery on a ruptured ulcer. Leticia’s father returned home to discover everyone in the village had been murdered and the village burned. He told Leticia only that they no longer had a family. Leticia remembered clinging to her father as he swam the Rio Grande and entered America illegally. Through a mutual friend, Leticia got a job as Samuel and Nadine’s housekeeper in their home in Berkeley.

Anita Días’ father died when she was a small child. When she turned six, she was involved in a car crash that killed her little sister Claudia and left Anita blind. A year later, Anita’s mother, Marisol, was pursued romantically by a man with a history of abusing women. She learned about his criminal background and swore that she would not tell anyone. However, her promise did not keep him from trying to kill her. After Marisol recovered from the wound after Carlos shot her, she took Anita and attempted to seek asylum in the United States. They were separated at the border, and Marisol disappeared as a result of bad record-keeping. Anita stayed in a group home and two foster homes during her early days in America. In one of the homes, the foster father tried to rape Anita.

Selena Duran and Frank Angileri, two workers with the Magnolia Project for Refugees and Immigrants, were assigned to Anita’s case and soon were devoted to helping Anita find a home. Through several trips to El Salvador, Anita’s homeland, interviews with family and friends, and the help of a private investigator, they learned there was a possibility that Leticia was Anita’s distant cousin.

Meanwhile, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Leticia had moved in with Samuel, now a widower. Samuel convinced Leticia that even if Anita was not related to her that they owed it to the child to give her a family. Samuel was disenchanted with his own daughter and grandson, both of whom turned out to be greedy and distant. He also feared he had done nothing of impact with his life because he had stayed distant from others, with the exception of Nadine. He believed taking Anita in was one way that he could redeem himself. Leticia and Samuel agreed to take Anita into their home and serve as her family until her mother could be found.

Sadly, Selena and Frank determined that Marisol had become a victim of Carlos. The police were called to Carlos’s house when they heard a woman screaming. Along with that woman, who was dead after being beaten with an iron pipe, police found the bodies of multiple women and girls buried in Carlos’s backyard. Marisol’s body was among them. It was determined that Marisol was probably sent to a refugee camp in Mexico. From there, Carlos arranged to have her kidnapped and brought back to El Salvador where he killed her.

Leticia and Samuel have taken care of Anita as they promised. Samuel has taught her to play the piano and has paid for surgery to restore her vision. They arrange for Anita to see a child psychologist to help her work through her grief and anger from her mother’s death. In the final scenes of the novel, Anita demonstrated that she trusted Samuel and Leticia enough that she took them to visit Azabahar, the imaginary place where she believed her mother and sister lived with the angels. Samuel described the place as being one that was as real as any other place, but it was one that could only be seen with the heart.