Books: “The Wind Knows My Name” by Isabel Allende

Immigration is a serious issue that has devolved into a political hot potato. Politicians denounce it over the airwaves when election time rolls around, then after its turn in the 24-hour news cycle, it suddenly disappears.

One of the most alarming, heartbreaking sidebars in the immigration story is the separation of children from their parents at the southern border. Untrained immigration officers, regarding these refugees from Central America as indistinguishable from one another, might send kids to Mexico, for example, who are not even Mexican, or place them in American foster homes while their parents wait years for legal asylum.

In “The Wind Knows My Name,” Isabel Allende tells the story of several of these refugees, one of whom is Samuel, a former Austrian-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. In 1938, at the age of 6, he was placed on a “kindertransport” to London along with hundreds of other Jewish kids and never saw his family again.

Years later, Samuel eventually winds up in Berkeley and hires a maid named Letitia, herself a refugee from a mass murder in her small Salvadorian village. A third Latina, Selena, a lawyer dealing with immigration issues, becomes absorbed with finding refuge for Anita, an 8-year-old from El Salvador whose mother may have been murdered by a spurned lover.

“The Wind Knows My Name” delves into the details most immigration stories leave out—the evil narcos, the threat of mass murder from government soldiers, and most of all, the sadness of kids who will never see their parents again. Obviously, because of its serious subject, it’s hardly the breezy novel you may be craving poolside. But the issue of immigration will never be something to smile about, and Allende’s novel gives the subject the respect and humanity it deserves.

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