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. Her grandfather Eoin is six years old, and everyone believes that Annie is actually Anne, Eoin’s mother, who disappeared during the 1916 Easter Rising. Anne’s husband Declan was killed in this revolution.

Annie falls in love with Thomas, who has always been infatuated with his friend Declan’s wife. Annie wants to stay in 1921 Ireland because there is nothing left for her in 2001 America, but she is out of place in Ireland, looking to the past, while Thomas looks to the future.

In 1921, Ireland and England sign a peace treaty, beginning discussions of Ireland’s independence. It is a fraught and chaotic time; British forces consistently attack pockets of the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Anne’s sudden return and her bizarre knowledge of the future is suspicious. When Annie saves the iconic revolutionary figure Michael Collins from an assassination attempt, even Thomas is concerned about Anne’s loyalties. By December of that year, Michael Collins has successfully negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British government. This treaty divides Ireland, giving the Irish republican rights for the first time in their long history of colonial rule. But the treaty does not grant Ireland independence—its right to self-rule is under the sovereign jurisdiction of the British government. Michael Collins, once lauded as a revolutionary hero, becomes a controversial figure in tumultuous time. The tension in Ireland in 1921 is so sharp that people fear a civil war.

Annie is concerned that Declan’s older brothers are out to get her. Liam was the one who shot at her on the boat, and both brothers are angry that Anne is now with Thomas, who remains loyal to Michael Collins. Nevertheless, Annie and Thomas get married with Eoin’s gleeful blessing.

As the controversy over the Anglo-Irish Treaty descends into civil war, Liam pursues a now pregnant Annie. When Liam’s mother finds Annie’s story recording Michael Collins’s future assassination, Liam accuses Annie of plotting to kill Collins. He leads her at gunpoint to Lough Gill, where she disappears back to 2001. Heartbroken, Annie discovers that Eoin inherited Thomas’s home in Ireland—now that Eoin is dead, the house belongs to Annie. She finds Thomas’s old journals and is reunited with Maeve, who worked in the home as a teenager. Now an old woman, Maeve knows that Annie Gallagher is the same Anne Smith she once worked for, no matter how unlikely the story.

One day, Annie stands by the lake, heavily pregnant and distraught. Suddenly, the fog lifts over the lake and a familiar tune whistles on the wind. Thomas Smith pulls up to the shore in a boat. Once Eoin left for college in 1933, Thomas attempted to time travel via the lake. He successfully reunites with Annie in 2001.