As I have mentioned previously, I have been very reluctant to read any books by new authors during this pandemic, sticking instead to those who I know are reliable. But recently, either because of Amazon’s seductive emails offering discount prices or because I am getting bored, I have been reading a few new authors. Amy Harmon is one of them and her book, What The Wind Knows makes me glad to have stepped  out of my comfort zone and tried something new!

Anne Gallagher, an author who lives and works in New York, has just lost her grandfather. He had promised that one day he would take her with him back to Ireland, the land he had left when he was eighteen. But somehow the right time never seemed to arrive and now that he has passed away, it is clear that she must take his ashes back to his village in Ireland and scatter them on the lough nearby.

When she arrives in the small village she is amazed at how much she knows about the village from the stories her grandfather told her. Soon after she settles in, Anne takes a small rowboat out onto the lough to scatter her grandfather’s ashes. The day is bright and sunny but a heavy fog seems to move in over the water and soon Anne can’t see anything. Just when she is about to panic she hears voices and sees another boat coming towards her. When she cries out, one of the men sees her and shoots and the next thing she remembers is being hauled to shore by a man she does not know and a boy who looks vaguely familiar. Wounded, she is taken to the manor house she remembers seeing before, but the house looks newer and is furnished quite differently. By the time she fully regains consciousness, she realizes that she has somehow slipped back in time to the Ireland of 1921.

Because she looks exactly like a woman named Ann Gallagher, who went missing in an uprising five years earlier, people just assume that she has returned to take care of her son who had been taken in by Dr. Thomas Smith, a friend to both Anne and her now dead husband. Not knowing how she managed to slip back in time to 1921, or how to get back to her own time, Anne tries to fit in as best she can and tries to keep the secret of her identity.

But theIreland of 1921 is a dangerous place, with calls for change to self governance and independence from England. Thomas is caught up in the political upheaval, and Anne gets caught up in it too, but she knows things she should not know and her seemingly prescient warnings soon bring suspicion and questions from Thomas and the leaders of the Irish uprising. As her feelings for Thomas and the young boy who regards her as his mother deepen, Anne realizes that she must decide whether to give up on returning to her old life and instead risk everything on a new life and a love she thought she would find. But is that a choice that is hers to make? Only the wind knows.

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Lauren and Sharon

Book Study worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.