What the Wind Knows

What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon (2019) is a love story and a piece of historical fiction. Inspired by Harmon’s own family history, the novel pays homage to Ireland’s rich history and storytelling tradition.

What the Wind Knows follows Annie Gallagher as she journeys to her grandfather’s home country of Ireland shortly after his death. Part romance novel, part historical fiction, What the Wind Knows immerses the reader in Ireland circa 1921, alluding to the country’s rich cultural legacy of poets and activists.

Plot Summary

In 2001, best-selling American author Annie Gallagher loses her beloved Irish grandfather Eoin to cancer. Eoin raised Annie, who grew up on Eoin’s stories of Ireland, transfixed by her Irish heritage.

Having promised Eoin that she would scatter his ashes on Lough Gill, Annie travels to Ireland with a cache of his treasured belongings, including photographs and historical mementos that reveal the Gallaghers’ connections with famous Irish figures like Michael Collins.

As Annie rows on Lough Gill to scatter Eoin’s ashes in a thick fog, three men on a boat shoot her. She is saved by a doctor named Thomas Smith. When she regains consciousness in Thomas’s home, Annie is shocked to find that she has somehow time traveled to 1921.