The Wind Knows My Name

Samuel Adler is five years old in 1938 when his father vanishes during Kristallnacht and his mother secures him a place on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Vienna. He travels to England alone, carrying a change of clothes and his violin. Eight decades later, seven-year-old Anita Diaz and her mother flee gang violence in El Salvador for the United States, only to arrive as a family-separation policy takes hold, and Anita finds herself alone in a camp in Nogales. She survives by escaping into Azabahar, a magical world of her own imagination, while a social worker and a clairvoyant grandmother figure work to reunite her. Allende weaves the two lives together with her signature touch of magical realism, showing how the displacement of children echoes across generations and borders.