When I learned Isabel Allende's new book, The Wind Knows My Name, is set in my hometown of Nogales, Arizona, among other places real and mystical, I put it on the top of my reading list. I wanted to find what she discovers in our borderlands, to see if it's as dearly held as my memory of a childhood bedroom window opening southward to a daily breeze of blended language, barking dogs and Grandmother's whistled greetings to her neighbors.
In a literary career spanning five decades Allende's storytelling walks a lyrical romanticism on roads imposed by social and political turmoil. This story is a fable joined by today's hard news. In her latest novel, Allende disrupts the mainstream narrative about our southern border. She discovers something in Nogales, via El Salvador and Vienna: the human capacity for hope and decency in the midst of despair.
