The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

Pub date: Feb 2, 2021
(Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the eARC!)

Writing this review, I am breathless. Every book I have read by Kristin Hannah leaves me feeling both emotionally drained and invigorated at the same time. Her world building and character development are exquisite, and The Four Winds is no different.

Told through the perspectives of a mother and daughter, The Four Winds give a voice to thousands of women who lived through the Dust Bowl era and fought tirelessly for the land she loves and the people who made it such. This is a book for all women. A book about hope and bravery and self reflection. About strength and resilience and hope. About family, born and chosen.

I didn’t think, on first impression, a book about Texas in the Great Depression would resonate with me. But living through another historical catastrophe now, this book helped me appreciate things like a warm shower, a hot meal, and clean air.

While this story is a page turner from the first sentence, it is somber. It is aligned with other Kristin Hannah books in that it’s about faith and perseverance through the hardest times. If you’re a historical fiction lover and you’ve felt touched by Kristin Hannah’s other books, this will be a new favorite, guaranteed. It certainly is for me.

This is unlike any other Kristin Hannah I have read. I love her books but this one I could not put down. The love of a mother knows no bounds in this gripping tale of famine, love and loss. If you are used to the happy endings you usually get, be prepared. Real life is all throughout this book and stays with you well after you’re done.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is an extraordinarily tense read that makes the reader feel desperately helpless and wanting.

I let out a huge sigh when this book ended. From beginning to end, this story is wrought with pain and hardship. There is very little respite for the reader and none for the characters. Hannah transports the reader to the dark eras of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl when telling this story about the farmers broken by drought and forced to move West with nothing but hope for a better life.

The protagonist, Elsa Martinelli, is unique but relatable. She is physically ordinary in every way but she loves fiercely, feels deeply and perseveres without abandon. Hannah has a unique skill for writing about the complex relationships between women and making them feel realistic and relatable. This story is not only about surviving the drought and a depression but about motherhood and the extreme lengths a mother will go to provide for her children. 

This novel is stunning and beautifully written; gripping the reader and yanking them into the story as a helpless observer. You do not just read Four Winds, you feel it. Portraying the darkest moments in a person's life and relaying the fierce tragedies of abandonment, death, starvation, poverty and complete disregard for human life; the reader feels everything. At times my heart was racing or my gut wrenching as I witnessed the horrors of this time period and what these individuals experienced. By the end of this book, I was wrecked. This story is tragic. 

That said, I do not want to deter readers by just expressing how purely tragic this story is. Hope and perseverance lay claim to this narrative as well. As it is with all emotions - you cannot feel one without the opposite - you cannot feel the total despair of Four Winds without also feeling the resilient hope the characters cling to. 

Thank you, NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Kristin Hannah, for a copy of this book for review! This is easily one of the best books I will read this year.

This was another heartbreaking and beautiful novel from Kristan Hannah.

The novel chronicles the challenging journey of a mother and her children as they move west to California during the Dust Bowl Era. This isn’t a part of American history that I knew very much about, and this novel really captured the anguish and hardships that many families experience during that era. It is a powerful novel that fans of Kristin Hannah’s previous novels will enjoy.

Thank you to @netgalley for providing us with an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for a review of the book.

The Four Winds is an excellent book - well written, researched, and crafted. The story is beautiful and heart wrenching at the same time. Struggles, loss and natural disasters are prominent yet love still shines through.

Aw man, where to start. I have loved all the Kristin Hannah books I have read. But this one was very disappointing. I found it incredibly lacking in plot. Instead of an interesting plot, it had environmental descriptives over and over and over again. It felt like a nonfiction diary. There was hardly any dialogue and the dialogue that was in it, was just a half a page long. Short and sweet. For a person who loves dialogue, this just wasn't cutting it for me. There just wasn't enough variety for me to enjoy my reading experience.

This is a heart warming story of love and hardship taking place in Texas and California during the Great Depression. The characters were well developed and I rooted for them hard. Kristin Hannah does an excellent job of building characters and getting me to care deeply for them! Bring your tissues when you read this one - like many of her novels it is heart wrenching at times but at the end it left me feeling inspired most of all.

Wow....
Heartbroken and yet inspired.
Rarely am I moved to tears by a book even when emotionally invested but this one just hit differently. So much heartache and pain, while still standing strong. The struggle between being grateful and standing up for yourself.
So thankful for this ARC from NetGalley!

I have not read a Kristin Hannah book since 2010 but from what I understand, The Four Winds seems to be similar to the last couple of novels she's written.
This book is about Elsa Martinelli and the struggles she faces in 1920s and 1930s. Her life is very much impacted by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
I did like Elsa as character although it did seem like she was affected by every bad event of her time period.

Ultimately, while I think the book was well written and I liked Elsa, this was not really a book for me. I felt the book could've been a little shorter without compromising the story. Also, it was heavier and sadder than I typically enjoy.

Woof, my heart. There was so much packed into this book, with parts I loved and parts I didn’t. Overall, I liked it and I flew through the entire 464 page book in less than 48 hours. It switched off being narrated between Elsa and her pre-teen daughter Loreda, though I’d say Elsa narrates 70% and Loreda 30%. At first I was worried that Loreda was Marah 2.0 (iykyk), but she grew on me. I really enjoyed the Dust Bowl setting during the Great Depression and learning about the western migration. It’s a piece of our country’s history I know very little about and it’s sad and important. Overall, this book was very heavy and bleak, and I was very stressed out for the characters (which maybe shouldn’t have been surprising given the setting during the Great Depression). The first 100+ pages of this book are SLOW. So slow that I was worried that this was the first KH book I didn’t like. Thankfully that wasn’t the case, but that’s a tough way to start a book. It did end up making sense to me why she started it the way she did, but I would have preferred more character development upfront. I also struggled with the end - it ended pretty abruptly and I felt a little unsatisfied. That being said, the themes of this book were powerful and tie strongly to current times and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since finishing the book. It really made me think about “otherness” and how we treat people different from ourselves - immigrants, those experiencing homelessness, etc. We’re all people and everyone deserves to be treated with respect. Overall, I do recommend it and can’t wait to see what everyone thinks!

A terrific but very sad book about the hard times that faced Americans in the 1930s. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowls crippled many as depicted in this novel. The characters are realistic and heroic. My thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Kristen Hannah for allowing me to read The Four Winds for an honest review.
I love all of Kristen Hannah’s books and am excited to add The Four Winds as one of my new favorite books! Having taught about the Dust Bowl, reading The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, in my English classes, I was reminded of the struggles people had, like my grandparents, just to stay alive.
Growing up in Texas around 1934, was not an easy time for Elsa, a gangly girl, shunned by her parents for not being beautiful or social. As she struggles to become her own person, she meets Raffe, a younger, good-looking man, enjoying his attention, resulting in a quick, unexpected wedding, and moving to Raffe’s farm to live with his parents. As Raffe tires of the dust and failing farm life, leaving her and their two children, she realizes how much she loves the land and the love of his parents. This loyalty is challenged as dust continues to blow and fills the lungs of her children. This strong young woman packs her children in an old truck and heads out to find a better life, discovering that people aren’t welcoming of the newcomers. Her story is one of history, courage, determination, and love that you will applaud and not forget. I’m so excited to recommend this book to family and friends.

This book is depressing. It touches me because I never ever wanted to live the life of a farmer who’s life existence is at the hands of the weather. How do you survive a drought for over four years, a Great Depression of the whole country at the same time. The government forgetting about the farmers plight. When you can’t scratch a crop out of dust and dried up dirt. When your children have no shoes and a potato for their lunch, if you can find one. When trying to escape, to save your children from the sickness of constant dust storms, you go to a new life only to be shunned by those more fortunate, as dirty and disease ridden. You are shunned and looked down upon. You aren’t part of the more fortunate who have running water, shoes and clean clothes. When you are forced to live in a tent and work 12 hours in a field for fifty cents a day. When your only reason to keep fighting for survival is your children.
The strength of the farmer is beyond belief. The love of the earth even if it doesn’t respond because of the elements. This book is very well written and speaks of a time I only heard about from my grandparents and that was from the point of view of the small business owner in a small town during the Great Depression. The fortitude of Elsa and the children was amazing. Growing up without love but with affluent parents Elsa was forced into farm life, but it became her love and existence, until the years of the drought. Her fight to give her children a better life, an education a future of successes was amazing.
Thank you Kristen Hannah, NetGalley and St. Martins Press for allowing me to read this ARC I didn’t enjoy reading it only because it was so true of the hardships experienced by that era of the farmers life in the Great Plains it hurt my heart. I also felt proud of the fortitude of Elsa and strength it took to do what had to be done no matter the pain, shame and loneliness it brought. It’s up to you if you’d like a book like this. It’s amazing and painful. I give it 4 stars because it’s too depressing for me but so well written.

I have read books by Kristin Hannah before and always look for her new ones. "The Four Winds" is an amazing book on a time when Americans were struggling so much. The 1930s were a rough time that I had heard about during history classes, but this book makes it even more real. The main character, Elsa, touches the heart and one has no choice but following her story. This book was hard to put down. I know this book is fiction but Kristin Hannah is able to bring America during the Dust Bowl into focus and makes you feel the hurt and horror of the times.

A stunning tale of strength in resilience during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. As with any other Kristin Hannah novel, this will pull at your heartstrings. You have to go into this book knowing that this will not be a fast read. The writing is so beautiful and atmospheric, you need to read slowly and enjoy the ride. Kristin does a perfect job of setting the scene. Her descriptions make you feel like you are living in the book. The overall story is heartbreakingly beautiful. I've never read a book about the Dust Bowl before. Elsa's strength, determination, and commitment to give her children a good life is inspiring. Be sure you have a box of tissues at the end.

I liked the story and the writing but the book is very depressing and a sad era in our country's history, With the Dust Bowl sweeping the central US, many families give up and flee to California for a new start. The history of the 1920's through the end of the 30's is sad and shows the grit of people from that time. The great Depression, the crash of the stock market, the decimation of the farming are all discussed. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book is set during the dust bowl of the Great Depression. It took me a while to warm up to, Elsa, the main character, but by the end I had grown to love her. It was obvious that the author had done a tremendous amount of research. The descriptions and all the details really added to the story. I especially liked that it did not have a predictable ending. This was quite a sad story, but one that I enjoyed and have continued to think about long after I finished,

Kristin Hannah has done it again! The author has created another original work, this time set in the 1930s U.S. when the farmers were praying for rain and the earth got dustier and dustier. We watch as Elsa Martinelli does what any strong woman, great mother, and all-around good person would do to save her children. The story is a little repetitive at times, however you can almost feel the grit in your teeth, the hunger pains in your stomach and the love in your heart with each turning page of the book. Thank you to Kristin Hannah and St. Martin's for the ARC.

It is rare for me to pick up historical fiction. Honestly, Kristin Hannah is one of the only authors in this genre that I will read. And as with any Hannah book, you can expect to be completely heartbroken and shattered while reading this book. I think a combination of knowing that my grandparents were young children during this era, and the current state of our country and the world…I felt everything in this book extra hard. Parts of the book were a little drawn out for me, but I became completely lost in this world and what was going on. Parts of this book are so depressing and the hopelessness and despair of the times really hits you. You wonder how many hits a person can take and keep going. I enjoyed all the characters, and especially felt the mother-daughter relationship between Elsa and Loreda.

Bottom Line: If you are into historical fiction, this was beautifully written. You feel everything. Be in the right state of mind to read it, it is horribly depressing and I feel like I am going to need several light and fluffy romance novels to cleanse myself from this.

**I received a copy of The Four Winds from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are of my own.**

A great historical fiction read from Kristin Hannah. Set in the Great Depression of the 1930’s, this is a novel of despair and dreams and Elsa, who faces both with great courage. It is evident that the author has done a lot of research into that period of American history.