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 ReviewAN 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.
