Who Has Seen The Wind

Who Has Seen The Wind
- by W.O. Mitchell
336 pages (1947)

a coming-of-age during the Great Depression

If it be a no-brainer adventure or a plot full of relentless debauchery you're looking for, I suggest you avoid this book entirely. However, if you seek a deeply touching novel of intelligence and substance, indeed I urge you to read Who Has Seen The Wind. 

 It tells the story of a prairie boy's initiation into the mysteries of life, as he discovers death, God, and the spirit that moves through everything: the wind. 

The plot details the little things in life that most of the masses overlook, and accurately relates the expressions and deep feelings of a young person growing up during the Great Depression. At the time I read it in school I could relate very easily to the primary character, Brian O'Connal. 

The novel's greatest strengths lie in its sensitive evocations of Brian's feelings, sometimes associated with his various experiences of death, sometimes with a child's fundamental, inarticulate but insistent curiosity to discover the world within and beyond himself. I was lost in the character's maturation and progression as a person. 

This book is truly one I will never forget. WHSTW has definitely contributed to the way I looked at life in general, as a young person at the time. (I just recently learned that this novel was also made into a successful movie.)