What the Wind Knows

Amy Harmon

I was absolutely captivated by this story! I could hardly put it down and when I had no choice, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I didn’t want it to end and yet I had to keep reading to find out what happened. Clearly, nothing was going to get done around here until I finished it! 

In What the Wind Knows, Amy Harmon seamlessly blends elements of three genres – time travel, romance, and historical fiction – into one compelling and emotional read. 

In 2001, New York novelist, Anne Gallagher, grieving the death of her beloved grandfather, Eoin, travels to Ireland to carry out his request that she scatter his ashes on Lough Gill, the lake overlooked by his childhood home. There, she is mysteriously transported back in time to 1921, a time when Ireland was embroiled in a violent struggle for independence. Mistaken for her own great grandmother, a revolutionary who was missing and presumed dead, she adopts her identity, and is reunited with her grandfather as a 6-year-old boy. She also falls in love with his guardian. I don’t want to tell you too much of the story, but I couldn’t help wondering, would Anne live out the rest of her life in the past or would she, at some point, return to the life she’d left behind. I will say that I found the ending very satisfying. 

Amy Harmon is a gifted writer who makes the transition in time seamless and believable. She combines the magical and the real and integrates fictional characters and story with historical people, events, and places in a way that brings them to life. 

Not your typical time travel story and much more than a mushy romance, What the Wind Knows is a beautiful story of love that spans generations and time. Each chapter is introduced with a snippet of poetry by famous Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who was a contemporary of the historical characters. Well researched and cleverly told, the novel introduced me to a period of political unrest in Ireland that I knew very little about and for those of us who love fashion, there’s even a bit of that. After all, Anne shows up in 1921 in clothing that is entirely inappropriate for the era and has to go shopping for a new wardrobe! 

I could go on and on, but suffice to say that I found this book absolutely mesmerizing and I’ll definitely be looking for more of Amy Harmon’s novels to read. 

There will be no Fashion Friday post this week. Camping with grandchildren took precedence!