The four winds

by Kristin Hannah

Paper Book, 2021

Publication

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2021.

Collection

Highlands

Call number

Fiction H

Status

Available

Call number

Fiction H

Description

"Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli-like so many of her neighbors-must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation"--

Genres

Media reviews

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Hannah brings Dust Bowl migration to life in this riveting story of love, courage, and sacrifice...combines gritty realism with emotionally rich characters and lyrical prose that rings brightly and true from the first line

— 1 more

USA Today

Epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love...Majestic and absorbing.

User reviews

LibraryThing member slsmith101

Despite some good descriptive writing, it was choppy, melodramatic, and I especially hated the ending. Kristin Hannah is no John Steinbeck.

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LibraryThing member Gingersnap000

Kristin Hannah writes from her heart and involves emotions from her readers. The Four Winds tells the tale of farmers from the Great Plains of America and The Depressions. Families migrate to California to be able to feed their families. The migrants were treated like dogs and made to feel like

second-class citizens. Similar to how most American feels at the presents, they have been forgotten by the rich Planters as we are forgotten by Corporate America. The one percent get richer and we get poorer.

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LibraryThing member reb922

This was another great historical fiction read from Kristen Hannah. Set during the Great Depression The Four Winds tells a story of Elsa and her children was they suffer through the dust bowl in Texas. She goes into great detail about the hardships and horrors of drought, starvation and dust. Elsa

eventually reaches her breaking point and take her children out of one disaster or a journey to a better life that proves just as hard if not worse than the one she left behind. The details and research bring the hardships to life and are unfortunately relevant to life today. Than you NetGalley for letting me have an early chance to read this novel!

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LibraryThing member Cats57

Powerful. Heartbreaking. Mesmerizing. Unputdownable.

Depression, drought, dust. Workers' rights, fair pay, American migrant rights.

I can't say enough about this book. What a time period to set this in. It is so relevant considering all that Covid-19 has thrown at us. About the only thing missing

from our lives today is the dust-bowl.

I haven't read much about this time period or this part of the country to understand these people's hardships and heartbreaks. Mind you; this book takes place over about only two years.

If you like historical fiction this is going to be a must-read for you.

I haven't read many books by Ms.Hannah, but I certainly will be doing so now!

*ARC supplied by the publisher and the author. Thank-you.

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LibraryThing member LoriKBoyd

Wow! I am blown away (no pun intended). This book will stay with you long after you read the last page, much like The Nightingale. As we enter a new year with the same pandemic and political strife, so much of this book will open your eyes to the plight of those less fortunate trying to feed their

families and make a living in dire times and trying to right wrongs. Sound familiar? This book takes us from Texas to California during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. I admit, I put off reading this book due to the subject matter. But, I became immersed in Elsa’s story from the beginning.

Elsa, born to wealthy parents, becomes ill as a child and thus, becomes her lot in life; frail, unattractive spinster. Elsa is ignored with only books to fill her days. She meets an attractive stranger and her life is forever changed. The Martinelli family becomes the family she always wanted. Elsa will do anything for her family to survive, even head west with Her children, to find work. Her journey is that of the migrant worker doing anything to feed their family. Friendships are formed even in this time of darkness, and love survives. Elsa’s love, devotion, determination, and strength will be visible to all, except Elsa herself.

This book is written beautifully, the characters are wonderful, giving us total insight to their plight and despair, while making them relatable with normal every day issues. Let me honest, this is not a light read. It’s dark, sad, and, at times, it will rip your heart out! But, it’s an important story that I’m sure many do not know all that well, and is all too relevant. Warning....ugly cry ahead!

Many thanks to Ms. Hannah, St. Martin’s Press and NeGalley for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.

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LibraryThing member tamidale

Another wonderful story from Kristen Hannah! Set in Dalhart Texas, the center of the Dust Bowl, readers follow the lives of Elsa Martinelli and her family as they suffer through the drought, dust storms and the Great Depression.

As their lives become harder, Elsa’s husband leaves for California in

search of a better life. After some time has passed and one of her children nearly dies, Elsa decides to follow her husband to California in hopes of reuniting the family or at least finding a better way of life.

What awaits them in California is not what they had hoped for and their time spent there is one that takes true courage and strength to endure. Even with all the adversity, it is in California that Elsa finds her true self and realizes she is much more valuable than her past had led her to believe.

Readers who love interesting characters, stories of adversity and accurate historical fiction will enjoy this novel.

I received an advanced release copy and am happy to give my honest review.

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LibraryThing member fastforward

This book is the fourth or fifth I have read by this author and it's definitely my favorite. I fell in love with the female lead character right away in this historical fiction novel as you couldn't help but want to root for her.

The story takes place in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl Era. Elsa and

her family are experiencing the same hardships as so many other farmers from that time period. Fair warning, this is a bleak and depressing read and it was very similar to the reading experience I had with Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, The Long Winter, in which I kept asking myself how much more can these poor people take? But before you are left with the impression this is a total downer of a story, it also presents the opportunity to witness characters' strength, grit, determination, courage, etc. in doing what they could to survive when the odds were certainly stacked against them.

A terrific idea by the author to feature this time period in her book. You can actually see quite a few parallels between the story and things going on in this country and around the world in recent years.

Elsa is a character worth knowing and I highly recommend this one if you are a fan of historical fiction novels.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance digital copy! All thoughts expressed are my honest opinion.

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LibraryThing member brangwinn

Get your tissues out for this heart-wrenching book about trying to organize migrant workers in California during the Depression. Beginning in northwestern Texas in 1921 it is the story of a “ugly duckling” sister in a wealthy family. She’s usually relegated to her room to read, but at 25 she

seeks to find a life of her own and ends up being forced to marry the father of her unborn child, an Italian immigrant’s son. You might think of this as a modern retelling of The Grapes of Wrath. It’s a powerful story of a transition in American history that was challenging. Readers of Jess Walter’s The Millions, about union organizers in Spokane, Washington in the early part of the twentieth century, will enjoy this book. Hannah, a mega-seller in popular literature, will introduce a new group of readers to early labor struggles although in this book the heroes are wearing white and the bad guys are definitely wearing black. Once us snobby readers give into the romance, we find we really like the story.

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LibraryThing member jbarr5

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Book starts out with a listing of the author's other works, dedication and prologue where we learn about the penny that has hope for one's new life in US.
1921 and we start out in TX and Elsa has been raised to be very poor in health so the parents keep her safe at

home.
Her sisters are beautiful and are married and out in the world. Elsa wants to be more like them so she does a few things to her hair and dress and spends the night at a speakeasy where she meets a boy.
She meets him more over time and before you know it she's with child. What I hated to read was that her father dropped her off at the boys house for them to take care of the daughter and child.
She was from a very well to do banker family and knows nothing of preparing meals and doing chores. She is thankful to learn how to do everything.
Rafe is tired of TX life and the droughts cause him to just up and leave to head to CA. They don't hear from him and the youngest boy needs to be relocated for his health so she packs up the kids and heads west also, leaving the grandparents behind.
Terrifying hearing of the nights spent on the road and passing through the desert. When they reach CA things are not what they expected and Elsa is NOT afraid to work. She meets a wonderful woman in camp who gives her information about how to survive.
She did scrub a woman's house from top to bottom til 6pm one day and got 40 cents. She puts the kids in school and while searching for work she tries to also find Rafe.
Fell in love with this side of CA during the depression reading about it from John Steinbecks stories so to me this is an added plus to continue on with the story coming from a different irrespective.
Hard times hits them front and center and just when you think they are getting ahead you realize they are not. They realize it also and the daughter goes to do something about it.
So many emotions and I love hearing of the travels and the places they went through on their way to follow their dreams.
Tragic times and love hearing about how they survived through it all. Love hearing of the strikes during the time as the land owners were in control and could set the price of a picker for the day...
Never saw the ending happening as it did but was so glad Ledora gets to bring it all full circle and move on with her life as she gets older.
Received this review copy from St. Martin's Press via publicist via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.
#TheFourWinds #NetGalley
#stmartinspress

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LibraryThing member fredreeca

Elsa lives a life of privilege but she is still in a terrible situation. When she ends up pregnant, her family kicks her out and she moves in with her new husband and his family on their farm. Elsa has no experience in farm life or a family quite like this one.

When life once again takes a terrible

turn, Elsa digs deep for strength and makes some tough decisions. After the last dust storm which nearly killed her youngest son, Elsa decides to leave the only true family she has ever known. She loads up her kids and they strike out for California.

Elsa is one tough lady. She struggles to feed her family, to show love, and to just plain survive. She does what it takes. Sometimes it was even too much for me to handle. I would have to set the book aside for a minute and just breathe. My heart goes out to the people who lived during this time period.

Well! I think I have already read the best of the year for me! It is going to be tough to beat this one! What a wild ride this book is. Every emotion you could have…it is experienced within this story. I cannot imagine going through what these people went through.

Do not miss this one! Best of the best! It gives you all the feels!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

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LibraryThing member eyes.2c

Intense, real and absorbing!

Not since The Grapes of Wrath have I been so realistically immersed in such a time of hardships as the Great Depression and droughts of the Dust Bowl areas of the 1930’s. Told from a woman’s point of view, I found Elsa Wolcott’s story inspirational.
The trials of

an undervalued, unloved girl, who painfully finds life and purpose is only the beginning.
The introduction focuses on the loneliness of Elsa within her family, the role they’ve colluded to keep her in, unwittingly or not, leaving Elsa stunted by their unyielding perception of her.
Her one moment of fight for freedom, the making of a dress in rose silk, leads to something else. A small but devastatingly painful vignette. I must admit when I saw the silk dress reemerge in a different guise I was shocked. Nothing said stay in your alloted place as did that symbolic moment. Elsa was not allowed to be more. When she was shown attention, of course she gravitated towards it. She was thirsty. This in turn leads to being cast out from her family into a new one.
Set in Texas, Elsa now a Martinelli cleaves to her new family. Their joys are hers and when the continuous drought tuns the Texas panhandle into a dust bowl, she fights on.
Elsa’s story gives insights into the spirit of many of the women of the time despite the meanness of comfortable fearful and their lip service to Christian charity. Others are supportive, and nowhere more so than the women in the shanty camps of California
The dust bowl descriptions of the destructive dirt winds are harrowing. A manmade climate crisis that continues to haunt the past and mirror the future. Turning cows milk brown is just one. The threat of dust pneumonia another. Birds falling from the sky, animals and people painfully depleted.
When Elsa and her children leave for the promise of a golden Californian future, the bad had turned to worse.
Fear and greed is the Californian face. Elsa and her family make friends, meet with ridicule and hatred and become employment fodder for merciless cotton kings. Chewed up and spat out.
The influx of peoples referred to as the Okies was mammoth. Desperation and competition vied as government assistance was withdrawn. Any jobs the people did get were poorly paid and then wages were slashed for profit. The shameful practice of having pickers being economically beholden to the company, where the company charges rent and pays in chits that can only be redeemed in the company store, was rife. Families could never get out from under their debt. Children joined the picker lines. This was enforced labor. The Okies were economical slave labor. The choices were live or die.
Elsa is a warrior. Her trials in Texas were almost unbearable, and yet the California experience trumps even that. She is a woman with a fierce heart when it counts. Her meeting with a communist labor agitator is another turning point.
I was glued to every word. I was equally elated, appalled and devastated,
Hannah is a strong voice speaking into the past and the present. Four Winds has all the earmarks of a classic bringing alive those times for today’s readers, jogging us into reflection and introspection. One can’t help but see parallels between the then and now.
Her author’s note is a fitting finale.

A St. Martin's Press ARC via NetGalley
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew

The Four Winds: A Novel, Kristin Hannah, author; Julia Whelan, narrator
Kristin Hannah has written a remarkable novel covering the decade and a half between 1921 and 1936. These years were a time of economic, climate, and agricultural turmoil leading to tragedy in America. The war years had finally

come to an end, the Roaring Twenties and the Charleston were birthed, Prohibition had begun, and with it came the rise of the speakeasy, a new kind of clandestine night life, and crime. It was a time when the rich and the poor were separated by a number of superficial cultural beliefs concerning class, education, color, religion, morality and work ethic. Elitism was alive and well. along with deeply held prejudices, that seemed to thrive more in some areas of the country than others. The Great Depression was gestating and the Great Plains began to die of thirst. Troubling times were on the horizon.
Elsinore lived in a home without love. Her sisters were married, but she was confined to the home. at age 25, considered a spinster since she was unmarried and unmarriageable because she had contracted Rheumatic Fever when she was 14 and was told she would be ill for the rest of her life. She was told she had a weakened heart. She was repeatedly told that she was unattractive and would never marry. Her confidence waned, and she was often treated like a stick of furniture. She dressed unattractively and had hair down to her waist which she braided. She was quiet and obedient, but she read books voraciously, and very much wanted to go to college. Her father forbade it. Education was not necessary for a female. The books, however, inspired her to break free from her shuttered life.
One night, she left the house defying her parents, wearing a red dress she made for herself, looking a bit like a harlot in the eyes of those who were the upper class. That night, she met Rafe Martinelli, a young man, a farm boy, about a half dozen years her junior. Both of them were lonely, and they fell into a secret relationship. Suddenly, Elsa was pregnant and totally unprepared for it. No one had ever explained the workings of the body to her. Disowned and deposited on his doorstep, her life went into a completely different direction, as did his. He was supposed to leave for college and was engaged to be married to another, now he was tied to the farm. However, they both tried to do the right thing and make the marriage work. His family eventually embraced her more fully and more lovingly than those in the cold household where she was raised.
For a while, the Martinelli farm did well. Elsa felt like she had a family that cared about her and she loved her life. She had two children to whom she was totally devoted. Then came the drought, beginning in 1931 and continuing for years. It completely devastated the Great Plains and Texas where they lived. Crops died, farmers lost their homes and land. The Martinelli’s just barely hung on. Rafe began to drink. He hated his life and was filled with despair. Tumbleweeds bounced across the land and dust storms destroyed the farms. Houses fell into disrepair or were foreclosed. Families dispersed, husbands abandoned wives, and Rafe was one of those husbands. One day, he was simply gone, leaving everyone behind. At 12 years old, Loreda mourned the loss her father and blamed her mother, but she would come to realize that he had left them all, not just her. He had left his parents, his wife and his children. He had run from his responsibility.
When Elsa’s son Anthony developed pneumonia from the dust storms, in order to save his life and help him recover, she left the farm with her children and headed west to California. Once there, she learned what true despair was, what terrible hatred and prejudice was present in the towns she entered. Okies were not welcome. Women alone were not welcome. They were looked down upon and mistreated. They were starving. They were good people who had fallen on hard times and were treated like criminals, like animals carrying disease.
When Loreda became fed up and ran away, she met a man named Jack. He was a Communist who organized unions all over the country. He wanted them to help him. The story takes a tragic turn because of this, but as it journeys to its end, Elsa learns what real love is, Loreda learns how wonderful a a mother and daughter relationship can be and gains a purpose in life, and all the Martinellis learn about true love, at last. Communism was portrayed positively, but it wasn’t the end result of their efforts or their goals, and it represented the demand for equal rights and decent pay more than a political position of government control. They hoped and searched for mutual respect.
There were some scenes that felt contrived with too much of a romantic theme, but it was the romance that opened up Elsa’s mind and spirit. Sometimes disaster following disaster seemed to stifle the ability to suspend disbelief, because it was a stretch to believe that all of the tragedies could be experienced within the microcosm of this one family. The Progressive agenda was front and center as climate, immigration and migration were major themes. Overall, the theme was the disgraceful treatment of migrants, immigrants and those down at heel, like the “Okies”, who were refused even simple human kindness by most people who thought they were “more decent”.
The author uses the title to explain that “the four winds”, from the four corners of the world, had blown Elsa and those like her from their farms and their homes, to California and other places, to lives sometimes more hardscrabble. Gleaned from the diaries of women that lived through the dust bowl and migration westward, the author has painted a vivid picture of what their lives must have been like during those tumultuous times, and she highlights their bravery and strength. In her comment, the author compares the worst economic time in America, during the three decades of this novel, to the America now suffering from the pandemic and the ensuing economic decline in America. However, we were a country that I believe had been made great again, and only went into decline because of circumstances beyond the President’s control. It is only thanks to Trump that we were able to have a vaccine for the China Virus, and we are now hopeful that we will get the sickness and death behind us, once again restoring America to greatness.
To the author’s credit, she did not politicize this book, although she did speak of liberal issues and showed her hand in agreement with them. Hannah wanted to write a book that would emphasize the plight of women and shine a light on those with the courage and fortitude to face disaster and deprivation with grace, to illuminate the bravery of these women who bore the hardships of the day-to-day life, protecting their family, feeding them and caring for them as they suffered.
Some parts of the story seem incomplete. What happened to Rafe? How did the children fare in later life considering all they had suffered? How did the Dust Bowl end? I would have liked a fuller description of what did FDR did to help the farmers restore the Plains to productivity. I would have liked Jack, the Communist, to be more fully developed, and I would have liked the emphasis to be not on Communism, but on shared respect for people everywhere. However, this book opened my eyes to a period of time I knew little about and inspired me to investigate it further. What more can anyone want from a book than such inspiration?

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LibraryThing member SimplyKelina

Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. I was really excited for this one.

I normally read my books in about a day or two. This one took me weeks. It was just too slow moving and I found myself forcing myself to pick this up to finish. It was just too slow and too repetitive. It started off

really good, but then it just slowed down way to much. Yes, things were happening but it would dragged out into several chapters. I needed a faster pace.

Sadly, I ended up skimming to the end on this one.

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LibraryThing member SignoraEdie

This book captivated me. I rarely actually cry when reading a novel, but this story and the courage of Elsa touched me in a special way.

LibraryThing member susan0316

I have enjoyed Kristin Hannah's books in the past and just had to buy her new book. I started it as soon as UPS dropped it at my door and didn't do much else until I finished it. It's one of the best books that I've read in a long long time. It's a story about poverty, love and family that I will

long remember.

It's 1934 in Texas and the recession and drought have drastically changed the lives of the farmers. Instead of the crops they had in the past, they now have dry fields that don't yield anything and dust storms that make their lives and their farms even more brutal. Many farmers are losing their farms and equipment to the banks and the federal government is doing nothing to help their plight. They've heard that California has jobs and life will be good for them there. Many of them pack up their household goods and start the trek to California. When they got there, they find a way of life much worse than what they left. They are forced to live in unsafe conditions and paid a pittance for helping the rich farmers pick their crops.

Elsa has to decide whether to take her children to California for a better life or stay in Texas on the family farm. Her husband has left her and his parents are struggling to keep the farm profitable. When her son gets sick from the dust, she feels that she has no choice and leaves to find a better life. What she finds is a camp full of people who can barely earn the money to feed their children. She also finds prejudice and dislike from the Californians. Elsa never gives up in trying to keep her children healthy and fed. She'd never felt strong or brave in her entire life but she showed bravery and love every day to try to find a better life for her family.

This novel is so well researched and written that I could feel the pain of Elsa and her children. I admired Elsa and all of the other parents who did back- breaking work to help their families in this terrible time in American history. I'll warn you that this is not an easy book to read. I cried more reading this book than any other book that I've read recently. At the end the overwhelming feeling is one of admiration of Elsa as a strong and brave woman and strong hope for the future.

This is a novel that I will keep and re-read sometime in the future. It's a book that I am so glad the Kristin Hannah wrote full of characters that I won't ever forget.

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LibraryThing member JustineDiane

Kristin Hannah’s newest novel is a must read. This is a tragic tale of a woman named Elsa who faces many hardships both before and during the Great Depression at the hands of those she loves - love in return being the only thing she’s ever wanted. Elsa is a very loveable character who never

seems to love herself. This book will break your heart and then heal it all over again.

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LibraryThing member dawnlovesbooks

Kristin Hannah knows how to gut you by putting her characters through horrific experiences. Her most recent novel, The Four Winds, is about the harrowing account of one family’s plight during the dust bowl and depression.
The setting is brutal. The heat beats down on them. They suffer through

raging dust storms. Everything around them is dying- people, the animals, and even the land. Elsa is the heroine of this novel and her courage and strength are tested daily as she makes sacrifice after sacrifice in order to save her family. When you think things can’t possibly get any worse for them, it does, again and again.
Hannah vividly describes the harsh realities that those living during the depression faced. She paints a bleak picture that will stay with you long after you have finished the book.

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LibraryThing member pegmcdaniel

This is historical fiction at its best. Kristin Hannah must have done a tremendous amount of research to write a novel like this. I felt the same way about her novels The Nightingale and The Great Alone.

Written from a woman's point-of-view, The Four Winds is set in 1934 during the Great Depression

starting out in Texas during the drought called The Dust Bowl. Farms were failing because they could not produce crops with no rain. The horrendous dust storms caused 'dust pneumonia' in many people.

The protagonist, Elsa, came from a well-to-do family who treated her unkindly and made her feel unloved. She had no self-esteem and longed to be loved and be a member of a family who cared about her. She found that love from her in-laws after getting married. Her son suffered from dust pneumonia so she and her children eventually decided to move to southern California after hearing there were jobs there.

This realistic novel was emotional for me from start to finish, sometimes I was on the verge of tears. The migrants from Texas, Oklahoma, and other states suffering from the dust storms were treated unfairly in California and many died from starvation, typhoid, dysentery, and other diseases. The owners of cotton fields, fruit orchards, etc. paid the workers very little and got away with it since there were way more workers than jobs.

Warrior Elsa was courageous and brave for her two children despite the extreme poverty they and other migrants endured. There is a lot of interesting information about union workers which the author wove into the story. Be forewarned: the ending is very bleak.

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LibraryThing member ecataldi

Wow - this book was compelling and impossible to put down. It was also VERY SAD. I was hoping there would be a few more uplifting moments in it (hence the four star rating), but it was still supremely well written and emotional. The Four Winds is a great depression novel that starts in the Dust

Bowl of Texas. It's sad, emotional, and will only get worse as the story progresses. Imagine Grapes of Wrath but instead of focusing on a male you have female lead and it's twenty times more sad and depressing and that is the best review I can give it. You will cry your eyeballs out, but you will love the story and the characters in it. You've been warned. Now read and enjoy this book (if it can be called enjoyment).

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LibraryThing member Nancyjcbs

The Four Winds was an educational experience for me. Although I'm familiar with both the Dust Bowl and farm workers' struggles my understanding was unclear. Through Elsa's eyes I was able to see the struggle, taste the dirt, feel the hopelessness, understand the difficulties. This is a difficult

novel since the circumstances are difficult. But it was definitely worthwhile.
The following quote from the novel was true at the time and is true in 2021:
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

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LibraryThing member DrApple

I enjoyed this book. The main character, Elsa, is a strong woman who grows stronger as the story progresses. The setting is the dust bowl in Texas, then California, and Hannah's description are true to the historical accounts I have read.

LibraryThing member pdebolt

In 1931 in the Texas panhandle, Elsa Wolcott is the awkward daughter in a family that values appearances above everything. She is considered too tall and too thin to be anything other than a spinster; however, Elsa yearns for a husband and children. One evening Elsa breaks free of her restrictive

environment in a daring red dress she has sewn, and meets 18-year old Rafe Martinelli, who will change her destiny in unimagined ways. When Elsa becomes pregnant, she is shunned by her family and then lives on the Martinelli wheat farm in a lifestyle she never knew with a husband she barely knows. Elsa eventually becomes a cherished member of the Martinelli family with parents who recognize her worth.

When Rafe suddenly abandons his wife and children during the unrelenting drought that ruins their crops, Elsa bonds even more closely with the Martinellis despite their hardships. This is the time of the dust bowl and the Great Depression when families leave for what they think is the promised land in California. Elsa is forced to make the difficult decision also to join those heading west with her children. When they reach California, it is only to encounter even greater hardships. Those migrating to California are known collectively as "Okies" and forced to endure humiliation, exploitation and poverty in unimaginable ways.

Kristin Hannah has done remarkable research into this dark history in American life. Elsa's indomitable strength and courage, combined with the accounting of the horrors of the dust bowl, make this a memorable reading experience.

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LibraryThing member CandyH

What a story this is! So much history and so much sadness! I’m glad I read this book but at best, it’s depressing especially with things so depressing in our great country right now.

LibraryThing member Unkletom

Since John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, there have been very few novels written about the Dust Bowl and the mass migration of refugees to California that followed. That is probably for the same reason that not too many people would willingly climb in the ring with Mohammed Ali. Steinbeck

did such a magnificent job of recreating the grief, pain, anguish and sheer desperation of this tumultuous time in our nation’s history, that any efforts to surpass it would likely be doomed to failure. And yet, Kristin Hannah, author of the award winning historical novel The Nightingale, has attempted just that, and done it rather well, using her renowned ability to create strong female characters.

In The Four Winds we meet Elsa Wolcott in 1921, The scion of a wealthy yet emotionally distant family, she predictably seeks love elsewhere with equally predictable results. Disowned by her own family and dumped on the doorstep of her suitor’s, she is transformed in an instant from the daughter of wealthy merchants to the life of a hardscrabble farmer. Fortunately, what the Martinelli family lacks in wealth, they make up for in character and a determination to build a life in this land far from the country they left behind. Elsa is grudgingly accepted into the family by her husband’s parents and they are soon joined by Loreda, the result of Elsa’s indiscretion. Elsa adapts to her new circumstances quickly and life is going well. The price of wheat is high and prosperity is just around the corner.

Cut to 1934. The Depression, drought and dust storms have changed everything. The wheat is dead. The animals are dying. Bit by bit, everything they built up and put by is dwindling away in their desperate effort to survive. Finally, Elsa must face the difficult decision to take her children west, away from the storms and starvation.
California in 1934 was not a welcoming place for the dispossessed. Here, Elsa and Loreda’s strength of character is called into play as never before.

Hannah started writing this book three years ago, with no expectation that a book about the hardships faced by Americans in the Great Depression would become so relevant to our lives today. Is this book as good as The Grapes of Wrath? No, but it is timely and serves to remind us that we have gone through difficult times before and come out the other side all the stronger as a result. I recommend this book and rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

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LibraryThing member khoyt

I read a review of "The Four Winds" by Kristin Hannah. The reviewer said she did not finish because it was too depressing. I almost didn't read this book. But this was by Kristin Hannah! She is a phenomenal storyteller. After I finished the novel all I could think about is what I would have missed

had I not read the amazing story about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the plains (hence, the depressive nature of the storyline). Kristin Hannah wrote about true history. Yes, there are hard times, cruel people, and unforgiving land. Her prose was so expressive you could almost taste the dust, feel the heat. The characters were so real. This is the first time in a long time I cried while reading a book. Her wonderful characters showed the true American spirit. These people did not want handouts. They knew how to work hard and just wanted to raise their families and live the American dream. Sometimes we need to be reminded why they were called "The Greatest Generation". Your heart will ache for Elsa and her family. But in the end, you will come to understand: with faith, hope, and love you can surmount the circumstances you are given. And when you lose everything, Love remains.

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