The Year of the Wind
A writer searches for her vanished cousin in The Year of the Wind, Karina Pacheco Medrano’s unforgettable novel about the personal and generational costs of political chaos.
As a girl in Peru, Nina thrilled in stories of mythical Mama Huaco, in skating like she was flying, and in time spent with her vivacious, bewitching older cousin, Bárbara, who grew up in mountainous Umara among Indigenous communities. But Bárbara, an aspiring veterinarian, dreamed of a fairer world for all, making her susceptible to the teachings of the communist revolutionary group the Shining Path. Still, after Bárbara’s brief return to Umara in the early eighties to teach and recruit, Nina and her family were told that Bárbara had finally made it out of harm’s way, heading to Brazil.
For years, Nina chose to believe that her cousin had found peace and success––that she was somewhere distant but happy: “a beautiful woman with a great career … married” with “kids and several pets.” In fact, Bárbara had remained wholly “Mama Huaco’s descendant.” In the present, just before COVID-19 blooms in Spain, Bárbara’s doppelganger informs Nina that Bárbara is dead. Needing to know more, Nina chases Bárbara’s story back in Peru, hoping to unearth her romantic, once righteous cousin’s true fate.
The novel is heartrending as it maps the chasms between childhood innocence and the brutal banality of adulthood. Its accounts of often gendered violence are unflinching but respectful to the lost and scarred. Nina, who at twelve thought that “Shining Path sounded pretty,” at fifty encounters haunted spaces, where “the pain of the dead still pulses.” Though each revelation unravels her more, she persists, following the road back up to Umara and soliciting “those small corporeal stories—with smells, screams, familiar names—[that] could stir up the earth” she stands on.
“Not all … who are dead want to be found” in The Year of the Wind, a monumental novel about the persistent aftereffects of revolution, resistance, and war.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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