I just paid twenty five dollars to cry during a pandemic... I’m not sure if that makes me stupid or a sadist. Interesting cover and blurb said this was out of my comfort zone but when you join a book club it’s commitment.

What did I like? This book really pulls you into history and it’s really my first book involving the Great Depression and the dust bowl. I’m not a huge history buff and this is definitely not a romance. While the author really makes you feel the atrocities basically it makes you feel like history just repeats itself. If you’ve ever heard your grandparents talk about the Great Depression then you know it was a hard ordeal. I just don’t understand why we couldn’t get a HEA. I’m depressed after reading this.

Would I recommend or buy? I bought a autographed copy so covered that. I’d recommend to people who love historical fiction without a HEA. I’ve never read anything by this author and it was a five star book but that ending gave me zero pleasure.

I received a complimentary ebook copy to read and voluntarily left a review!

It’s 1934 in Texas. The nation has been in the Great Depression for a few years already. Dust storms and minimal rainfall are plaguing the Great Plains and forcing families to leave their desolate farms and head west in search of jobs and relief. Elsa Martinelli are her two children are one of these families that make the decision to head to California.

This is the third book I’ve read by this author and what I like most about her books are how human her characters are and how vividly she writes the environments. Reading about the dust storms the Martinelli’s experienced made want to grab a bottle of lotion and a gallon of water; I could feel the dryness. Elsa’s resilience was powerful and inspiring and truly displayed what a woman can withstand when in comes to her family. With that said, there were sometimes where I thought it was a lot for one woman. Everything that historically happened to families during this time period, happens to Elsa, which just seemed like overkill in regards to her plight. It made this story hard to read as there really is little joy. It’s a sad time in history and this book showcases all of that.

Sadly, being a native Californian, I wasn’t fully aware of the migration of the Midwestern population to California during this time. The treatment of these people was eye-opening to read about, but not super surprising. I would probably not read this book again nor can I say I totally enjoyed it, but the writing, the history lesson, and the capturing of this era and its people are what drove my rating. I’d recommend it for those wanting to know more about this time period.

Kristin Hannah. She seems to have a way with words and stories that sucks you in and you can ever leave until the end, and even then you are left thinking about the book for days. Her new release The Four Winds is no different. I could not put this book down, even though at times I just wanted to look away and not see what would happen next. Taking you through the Great Depression, the dust bowl, traveling west, searching for a better life The Four Winds weaves a story of adversity and grit, and survival. Disclaimer there are some graphic scenes in the first few chapters that sensitive readers might not appreciate.
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Kristin Hannah is a masterful writer. This book covered a topic I do not have much prior knowledge about- the Dustbowl. The imagery and details make you feel like you are living through this desperate time with the family. I do not want to disclose to much about the plot other than this is a must read. It will pull at your heartstrings for sure.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.*

Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. The Nightingale is one of my top 10 all time books, and I consider anything she reads to be worth the investment. So I was positively thrilled to see The Four Winds on NetGalley as an option for a digital ARC!

Typical of all of her novels, The Four Winds is a historical fiction story featuring a strong female lead. It is the story of Elsa, the daughter of a small-town Texas society family who for reasons unknown to the reader, was dibbed unattractive and unmarriageable. In a fit of anger, Elsa cuts her long hair into a bob and sneaks out into town where she meets the handsome, rakish young Rafe Martinelli who woos her and makes her feel beautiful and cared for. Rafe & Elsa embark up on a romance secret from both of their families. When Elsa's mother realizes she is pregnant, her father puts her out and delivers her to the Martinelli farm where she & Rafe are made to be married. Elsa finds belonging and purpose on the Martinelli farm that she never had before. When their daughter, Loreda, is born...it seems as though she will have a life she had never hoped for.

But it is 1932 in the panhandle of Texas, and the great depression plus the great drought combine to leave the Martinellis starving and struggling just to survive. Rafe abandons the family in search of life in California-leaving his parents, his wife and his children behind.

As the dust storms intensify and the rains fail to come, Elsa decides they must leave to give her children a chance of survival. Alone, she sets out for California and the promise of work and income and a life of possibilities for her children.

She finds California overrun by others in the same situation. "Okies" living in camps, destitute and starving but banding together. Elsa and the children have to find strength and bravery inside themselves to survive.

I really enjoyed this book, though I confess I found myself waking at night concerned about the plight of her children and imagining how awful it would be to live in those conditions. Beautifully written, like all of Hannah's books, it is another heartbreaking but thought-provoking novel.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

While some parts of the plot seems a bit too easy to fit together, I must admit that I got swept up in the story. I could feel like I was in the Dust Storms. I felt like I knew Elsa and the other characters and I was rooting for them from the very beginning. If the characters were not as fully dimensional as I wanted, they were still enjoyable enough for me to look forward to each night's reading. I've enjoyed other books by Kristin Hannah and would recommend this one to readers.

This review is coming from a person who does not like historical fiction!

I was so happy when Kristin announced her new book! After reading my first historical fiction "The Great Alone" and loving it, I knew I wanted to pick up more books in the genre and of course any more books by the author! It is safe to say thanks to Kristin Hannah, I will be picking up more historical fiction.

All I knew going in was The Four Winds takes place in the 1930s in Texas which was a desperate and heartbreaking time for all as the 1930s is when the Stock Market crashes and the time of the Dust Bowl. I think that is all you need to pick up this book!

This book dealt with so many emotions. You will see homelessness, poverty, grief, and much more. It will show you what a mother will really do for her children! Truly was real, raw, and uncut!

I did give this four stars because I did find it to be too long but not enough detail. I feel like the detail went to things I didn't really care for. (I like really knowing about people's poverty and struggles) I also found the end to be predictable.

Thank You, NetGalley & the publisher for the advanced copy! Of course, I went out and purchased my own hardcover!

Ok, here we go. I sooooo wanted to love this book. It was probably my most anticipated new book this year. Ya’ll know I love me some Kristin Hannah but this was a tough read.

This is an epic story so there’s really not a lot to tell you about plot. It’s basically one family trying to survive and create a better future. And bad things always happen. Always...

It was just so depressing. “But Wendy, it was set during the Great Depression!” You’re probably saying. And you aren’t wrong. It was a very tough time to be alive, and I did learn a lot about this time period. I would have liked some of the secondary characters to be fleshed out a little better. I think there was a missed opportunity to expand some additional storylines around these secondary characters to give you just a little break here and there from the sadness.

I received this book through Netgalley as an ARC. I absolutely LOVE Kristin Hannah! She sinks me in with her books and I get so captured in her stories. She really makes me feel for the characters and I can't get them out of my head. I always want her stories to continue but she has a way of ending this well and having it all come back together. I would highly recommend her books!

Another great book from Kristin Hannah. As usual, her character development and storytelling ability is on point. The premise of this one was sad and it just seemed like for every step forward there were two steps back for all the characters.

I am not quite sure how to feel about this one. It was good, like her books normally are. but good lord it was slow and depressing. So, so depressing. Like, on top of it being set in the depression. It was so so so freaking sad and I just can't believe people were so freaking awful (except I can believe it, ugh). Made me so sad. I really knew nothing about this era in America so as always, glad to learn a little bit. But, like, hardly any uplifting, inspiring, nice stuff. Just made it not so fun to read.

I loved Elsa. I did not like Loreda very much, though she did grow on me. I do think her growth as a character could have happened more gradually over more pages, instead of in a rush at the end because I didn't really click with it/believe it.

I did cry. Just a little - nothing like the sobfest when I read the nightingale. I should have expected the ending but I didn't. I was not very happy about it. Again, not in a omg I'm so sad about it way, but are you kidding? That's bullshit and unfair. Which, 'sup life.

For most of this book, it was a 3 star, but the last quarter or so did bump it up to a 4 star book. I just wish it had been a 4 star the whole way through.

I'm a member of approximately one million facebook book groups and as such I've seen an absurd amount of polarizing reviews for this book. Most of the negative responses seem to come from people being upset about the book being sad the whole time, but what else could a book about a life or death struggle for survival during The Great Depression be? Elsa's situation is desperate, depressing and dire yet she wakes up every day and fights for the fate of her family. This book is about hard times not happy endings. It is an honest portrayal of a hopeless time in history, and I found it to be wonderfully written.

Another great read by Kristin Hannah, fans of Nightingale will be very pleased with this one! Hannah does such a great job painting a vivid picture of the story and this story is no exception. I’m usually not a huge fan of books set in the Great Depression, but the characters of this story really sucked me in.

After dealing with drought and dust storms, Elsa and her family must leave Texas and head to California for a better life... Only things in California aren't what they expected...

I absolutely adore Kristin Hannah's books. She is one author that I will buy the book without reading the description because I know it will be great regardless. And of course that applied to this book. Not my favorite book of hers, but still great.

If you are a fan of Kristin Hannah's works, The Four Winds doesn't disappoint! If you haven't read one of her works, The Four Winds is a great read to start.

We watch as Elsa, a young woman who is seemingly a recluse in her family's home, yearns to break free. The consequences of one tumultuous night change her family and her life forever.

Mostly set during the Dust Bowl, Hannah sheds light on the hard choices Elsa and her family have to make, and sets her on a past to determine what kind of woman she wants to be - for herself and for her children.

Reading this during COVID-19, it sets so much into perspective - what we can take for granted compared to what so many lived through and lost during that time. It also illuminates how some things haven't changed in terms of classism, wealth, racism and stereotypes.

Thank you to Netgalley and to St. Martin's Press for a review copy - all opinions are my own.

Once again, Kristin Hannah does an amazing job of making the reader feel they are with the characters in the book. I could not put this book down! Highly recommend. As always, you can’t go wrong reading one of her books.

The Four Winds—award-winning author Kristin Hannah’s latest novel published 2 February 2021—is a powerful depiction of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s in America and her best work yet in my eyes. It is powerful writing about a very tough era in the history of our country. I would even go so far as to say it is one of the best books I have read during the past year—and this degree-holding librarian of 42 years reads hundreds each year.

As most of us probably did, I read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath as required reading in high school, and then re-read it 10-15 years ago to decide whether it was an appropriate read for middle schoolers (honestly no—I think the way the subject matter was presented lends itself to a more mature reader). For those of you that lived in Outer Mongolia while growing up rather than America—the Grapes of Wrath is a 1939 American novel written by John Steinbeck. It promptly won the National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and then a couple of decades later it was cited prominently as a factor for Steinbeck’s winning the Nobel Prize in 1962. The book portrayed life in America in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, through portraying a family that travels to California to find work and is caught up in the plight of migrant workers of the era. It is realistic, bleak reading, and is probably pretty accurately filled with a lot of “language” which I find off putting to read even if it suits the characters.

The Four Winds has many parallels as it too is set during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression and focuses on a Midwestern family who goes to California. It begins in the Texas panhandle in 1921, and then, in the 1930s, follows part of a Texas farming family to California where they live the bleak life of a migrant farmer family in the San Joaquin Valley of California. It tells a compelling story of a parent’s love for their children. The novel also portrays movements of the era including Communism in America. The book is full of amazing protagonists and does a powerful job of putting the reader into the nitty-gritty of what life would have been like then.

I did not like the first chapter or two of the book, but then, could not put it down it was such compelling reading. I liked it better than The Grapes of Wrath as a vehicle to experience what life would have been like then. And, I would also like to encourage those who read this book, to experience it as a portrayal of life in that era, and NOT to apply 2021 politics to it. I did not read it as a political statement, but as a historical novel, but am sure some will try to do so and miss the richness of the story at face value.

Here is what the publisher has to say about the book:

“The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it—the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, 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.”

From the prologue:

“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.
I came west in search of a better life, but my American dream was turned into a nightmare by poverty and hardship and greed. These past few years have been a time of things lost: Jobs. Homes. Food.
The land we loved turned on us, broke us all, even the stubborn old men who used to talk about the weather and congratulate each other on the season’s bumper wheat crop. A man’s got to fight out here to make a living, they’d say to each other.
A man.
It was always about the men. They seemed to think it meant nothing to cook and clean and bear children and tend gardens. But we women of the Great Plains worked from sunup to sundown, too, toiled on wheat farms until we were as dry and baked as the land we loved.
If I close my eyes sometimes, I swear I can still taste the dust …”

From the book when part of the family heads from Texas to California because one of the children is literally dying from the dust storms and what they are doing to his lungs. They are on the edge of the desert region one has to pass through to make it west to California, and know they will need to travel by night because of the extreme heat:

“AN OVERBURDENED JALOPY RUMBLED past, headlights bright enough to reveal a sloop-shouldered family of four walking along the shoulder of the road, going west, the mother pushing a stroller, and a white sign posted for travelers: FROM HERE ON, CARRY WATER WITH YOU.
A year ago, Elsa would have thought it insane that any woman would think to walk from Oklahoma or Texas or Alabama to California, especially pushing a baby carriage. Now she knew better. When your children were dying, you did anything to save them, even walk over mountains and across deserts.
Loreda came up beside her. They watched the woman with the baby carriage. “We’ll make it,” she said into the quiet.
Elsa didn’t know how to repond. “We made it through the Dust Bowl,” Loreda said, using the recently coined term to describe the land they’d left behind. They’d read a newspaper a few days ago, learned that April 14 had been dubbed Black Sunday. Apparently three hundred thousand tons of Great Plains topsoil had flown into the air that day. More soil than had been dug up to build the Panama Canal. The dirt had fallen to the ground as far away as Washington, D.C., which was probably why it made the news at all. “What’s a few miles of desert to explorers like us?” “

And one last passage from a section of the book where the migrant families are trying to survive:

“The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.
Jack says that I am a warrior and, while I don’t believe it, I know this: A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself.
It sounds like motherhood to me.”

I highly recommend this book and thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book, and for allowing me to review it.

Let me start by saying...this was the bleakest book that I have ever read in my life. The hits just kept on coming: poverty, dust, abandonment, destroyed livestock, babies crying literal mud from the dust in their tears...this book is UNRELENTING. I wonder how I would have felt about it had we not been coming up on a year in a worldwide pandemic and had I not been nearly nine months pregnant when I read these horrific scenes.

I absolutely love Kristin Hannah’s previous venture into historical fiction, “The Nightingale.” Like, obsessed. But that one at least had brief moments of joy and happiness; let me warn you, this one does not. And while Elsa’s story is a powerful one, for me, it didn’t pack the same emotional punch as one where the reader is given even a glimmer of hope.

I was not a fan of the ending. It felt a little rushed to me, especially after spending several hundred pages slogging through this darkness. No author has to give the reader handouts, of course, but I felt like I deserved a little bit of a happy ending. NOPE. Won’t find that here!

Honestly, I hate to write a bad review, but I won’t be recommending this to anyone. It was, frankly, an exhausting and unrewarding read, one which made me feel sick and depressed and just disgusted with the world. I get enough of that scrolling through Twitter! But I understand WHY Kristin Hannah wrote it that way - I just don’t need to subject myself to it for fun.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Four Winds.

What do you do when the land and weather turn against you and you can no longer survive at your home? Imagine fighting to survive for years, losing your land or knowing you must move to save your children's health, and being treated horribly once you arrive in your new home, forced to live in camps and paid horrendously meager wages for a day's work (when you can find it.) Imagine suddenly being an unwanted refugee in your own country.

While I knew a bit of history about The Dust Bowl, The Four Winds really opens your eyes to just how terrible this time period was. I knew there were dust storms but I didn't realize how often they occurred or how sick they made the people and animals experiencing them. I was aware of the mass migration to the West but never knew how bad people were treated when they arrived. I knew people lived in poverty and suffering, but I wasn't aware of the history of sharecropping (sorta?) out West and the horrible working conditions of the time period.

The Four Winds is heartbreaking and inspiring, and a testament to how strong and determined the "Okies" were. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys well written, detailed, historical fiction. As always, Kristin Hannah weaves a story of strong women who experience love, loss and hope.

This book was AWESOME! We begin the book meeting main character, Elsa and her 'well to do' family. 'Well to do' does not mean kind, generous or loving. Fast forward and Elsa is on a Texas farm with her husband, their two children and her in laws. It’s a fascinating book. I loved it so highly recommend it.