The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is shaping up to be a top book of 2021. It follows a stubborn mother as she navigates the fallout from both her hasty marriage and the widespread collapse of the economy and ecosystem during the 1930s.

Elsa, our protagonist, is a complex woman who grounds this novel in a believable central character. Her devotion to her land and her family (especially her children) is immeasurable. It is heartbreaking to watch her struggle for a better life as she first stays, then flees, the only world she knows in north Texas as the Dust Bowl ravages her land and her life. The other characters, especially her children, are wonderfully rendered as well. This may be a work of fiction, but its depictions of generational poverty and relentless inequality are especially resonant in today’s world.

5/5: A beautifully written work of historical fiction. From the endless plains of the Texas panhandle to the rolling hills of crop-studded California, the landscapes are vivid and immersive. The characters are strong and weak, complexly human in every way. The setting is at once distant and utterly present, as it will no doubt conjure images of current migrant crises, climate change, rampant poverty, the housing collapse, and widespread disease and fear. However, The Four Winds is a testament to the strength of family, both blood and found, and the power of resistance and tenacity in the face of oppression and isolation.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Another exceptional piece of historical fiction from a writer who doesn’t disappoint. The setting is the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s, on the Texas panhandle. Elsie is overlooked by her parents who focus on her two pretty sisters. Already 25 and sheltered after an illness as a youth, Elsie ventures out and meets Rafe, a young dreamer. Elsie becomes pregnant, and her parents disown her. Working hard, Elsie endears herself into the lives of Rafe’s parents. When the crippling sand storms force many off the land, Elsie leaves with her daughter and son and faces even more hardship. This novel is filled with examples of courage, resiliency, and strength in the face of terrible challenges. Elsie’s story will break your heart, and has relevancy for the hardships faced by immigrants today. I highly recommend this novel, and thank NetGalley for the ARC.

It took me a few weekss to write this review after reading The Four Winds. It may take several more for me to fully process the depth of this beautifully written novel. This is one of those books that will linger in your consciousness for a very long time. It's complex and rich in character and explores the dynamic between a mother and daughter in a way that few have been able to accomplish. This is not a HEA story. Even weeks after reading it, I still feel the depth of the emotional journey. The Four Winds is a stunningly beautiful book that is worth every shed tear.

This book is lovely. Absolutely lovely. Kristin Hannah is extremely talented with historical fiction.

This book is about fierce love, empowerment, perseverance and the importance of human beings coming together. I sobbed and I am still solving. This is such an incredible read. If you liked The Nightingale you are going to LOVE this.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Again, Kristin Hannah will reduce you to a pile of tears with her latest book, The Four Winds. Here it will be with the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and it will not let you go. What Hannah does so remarkably well in her heart-wrenching novels is give us character we absolutely love and root for until the bitter end. She does not disappoint in the character of Elsa Martinelli and her children, Loreda and Ant. Elsa and her children endure brutal conditions on their farm in Texas and eventually make the decision to move out to California. There they are met with even more brutal conditions, but Elsa pulls on the love for her children to make her strong. Fight for a better day for them. And when it is all over. . .love remains.

In the author's notes, she points out that when she wrote this, she never anticipated the pandemic and how our lives would come to repeat history. Yet, here we are, and there's much to be learned from the character in this book and our own experiences today. When all else is gone, love remains. Lean into that.

My *only* small gripe is that this tends to follow the same kind of structural journey as The Great Alone in terms of it's ups and downs. However, Ms. Hannah, I do not care. I'm sure this book will end up at the top of my list at the end of this year.

Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor and now try to find a lighter book for my next read of 2021.

I had high hopes for this book, Kristin Hannah has set the bar pretty high after reading "The Great Alone", and I was not disappointed.
This is the story of a family living through the dustbowl and depression era, who then become "okies" who have migrated to California. Ms. Hannah has a gift for taking you through the history of the era yet keeping the story crisp and relevant. When I read "Grapes of Wrath" I remember understanding the sadness of the dustbowl era, but in this book you felt it. The characters are very well crafted and are complex, unlikeable and yet lovable too.
While this is not a topic I would have thought I was interested in, after reading this book I definitely want to understand more about this time period.
Once of Kristin Hannah's best books yet, 5 stars.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well this seals it. I am officially a Kristin Hannah superfan. This was my fourth novel by Hannah and every single one of them has received a 5-star review from me AND made me sob.

The Four Winds tells the story of Elsa, a young woman who was unloved by her parents and never felt at home in her small Texas town in the early 19oos. When she marries into to a farm family, she falls in love with the land that provides for her — only for the dust bowl to betray her with drought and dust storms that make her children hungry and sick. She takes her family across the country to a new life in California, but conditions somehow worsen. Elsa, her young son Antony, and her headstrong teenage daughter Lorada — like the other hundreds of impoverished families that fled to California in the Great Depression only to live in shanty towns — are treated as skum and paid little for their work. When Loreda and Elsa meet a young worker's rights activist (ahem, communist), they find their voice against the greedy big farmers — but at what cost?

I absolutely adored Elsa and Loreda and really took away the true message of this book — a mother's love is the strongest, unbreakable bond.

What a book! The author’s note at the end says it all. Although The Four Winds is centered around the Great Depression, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters in the book are not much different that what we are experiencing right now during a global pandemic. There is fatigue, sadness, and heartbreak but also resilience, kindness, and small glimmers of hope. Kristin Hannah told a beautiful story that I think every needs to read.

Thank you to Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another Kristen Hannah masterpiece! This sweeping story of Texas in the 1930s during one of the most depressing times in our country's history. This book will grab your heart and never let it go. I finished it a few days ago and yet I still find myself thinking about the courage and bravery of Elsa. She will remain one of my most beloved characters. I've read all of Ms. Hannah's books and I feel that this one is her best.

I'm surely not the first, and I definitely won't be the last to say that Kristin Hannah has done it again. She has created another masterpiece. You can almost taste the gritty, dust filled air, and can practically feel the sun beating down as if you were there on the farm in mid 1930's Texas. The circumstance of real life in 2020 and now into 2021 where hope is on the horizon, but we've all been touched in some way by a devastating global pandemic, it makes it a bit easier to put yourself in the shoes of Hannah's characters as they face the Great Depression and life in the Dust Bowl Era. I was up two nights in a row reading well into the wee hours agonize over the decisions these folks had to make, stay or go west? I don't know what I'd do if I were alive then, but I do know what I did early morning on Jan 1, 2021... I read the last chapters through tears and then cried some more reading the author's note. Oof. All the emotions! Just what we've come to expect!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy.

“As we know, there are lessons to be learned from history. Hope to be derived from hardships faced before...” from the author’s note at the end of the book.
This book is relentless, like the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Kristin Hannah presents these events so vividly I could almost taste the dust, feel the pain of hunger, the seeming endless dust storms and heat. While this book was begun before the pandemic of 2020 it is a fitting read for our times.

“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.”

Kristin Hannah once again delivers with this sweeping epic novel of the devastation of the Dust Bowl, the migration West, and the fight for survival among Americans.

Elsa Wolcott is a privileged but lonely girl, treated with indifference and outright disdain by her family because of her homely appearance and her health, weakened by rheumatic fever. One day, emboldened by her need to be loved and her deceased, beloved grandfather’s intonation to “ be brave,” she makes a decision that radically alters her life, alienating her from her family. That decision pushes her into a hasty marriage with a reluctant groom and binds her to the Martinelli family, a hardworking family of Italian immigrants and their beloved farm.

Elsa learns to be a farmer’s wife and her hardworking ethic earns her the respect and love of her in-laws-if not the love of her husband, Rafe. When an unexpected tragedy occurs and the devastation of the Dust Bowl threatens the health and well-being of her family, Elsa boldly decides to journey West to California in the hopes of a better life for those she loves.

Elsa faces new challenges as she tries to seize hold of her portion of the “American Dream” and make a life for herself and her children. Despair and economic depression haunt her at every turn in her journey. Elsa will need to become the woman her grandfather knew she could be-a brave warrior whose indomitable spirit just might save them all.

Hannah encapsulates this time in history with stunning depth and accuracy and explores the parallels between the Depression era and today. In Elsa, she creates a portrait of the American worker, as she fights against greed, prejudice, and the right to a living wage. Emotional and riveting, I highly recommend this novel.

Elsa Martinelli was unloved by her parents. When she finds herself pregnant, they drop her off at the fathers house and walk right out of her life. Now she finds herself in a family she doesn’t know with a baby on the way. And, oh yeah, it’s the beginning of the Great Depression. Life only gets harder when drought hits and she must choose between staying with the only people who have ever loved her and trying to make a better life for her children out West.

Kristin Hannah is a master of historical fiction and this latest novel does not disappoint! While reading I would find myself very thirsty because her description of the Dust Bowl era was so real. I was so invested in the characters’ lives from the very beginning.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance readers copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc of The Four Winds. I don’t normally like historical fiction but oh my goodness, I could not put this book down. It was amazing and heartbreaking. I really got attached to Elsa and the kids. I highly recommend this one.

This is the first book I read in 2021. I practically read it from start to finish in one setting. Kristin Hannah does not disappoint in this historical fiction novel that spans from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s through the Great Depression and Texas Dust Bowl. Due to the poverty, weather, and land issues that were faced, main character Elsa and her children, Loreda and Ant, were forced to migrate to California for better opportunities. Despite the challenges they faced on this journey, they were forced to stay strong together through multiple hardships.

I know many of us have come to rely upon Kristin Hannah’s novels for her heartstring pulling narratives and a good yearly cry. I can tell you that she is delivering on that again with her new novel, available on February 2nd, 2021.

This historical fiction novel is set in the 1930’s, just as the drought has broken across the Great Plains. This account of one family’s story showcases some of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, when the Dust Bowl era strikes with a vengeance.

Farmers are forced to either uproot their families, to supposed promises of greener pastures or try to farm in inhabitable conditions for their livestock and land. More surprising, to me, is how many simply abandoned their families with the burden became too much, leaving behind women and children to figure out how to handle everything.

That is what happens in this story and it is, honestly, one of the bleakest books that I’ve read. There is, truly, not a glimmer of hope in this one and the tragedies go on for hundreds of pages.

It is beautifully written, I learned a lot, I cried a lot, and I was left begging for a little more hope in this story.

"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"

"Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day."

Kristin Hannah has cemented herself as one of my favorite authors with this book. I really am not a fan of historical fiction but when Ms. Hannah writes it, I find myself devouring it the same way I do a thriller. I think this is because she always makes it apparent that while the events you are reading about are in the past, they still have correlation with current events. "The Four Winds" isn't as full of romance as "The Great Alone", but it is full of mother daughter relationships that are insightful for both mother readers and daughter readers. Set in the depression, dust bowl era, this heavy read actually taught me a lot and prompted a lot of searches about the era. Above all else, this book is a story about a woman who never gave up, no matter how hard it was. This is a story about a child coming of age under the great pressures of financial strain. Five stars.
Read in or check it out from your library in February.

Props to Kristin Hannah for bringing an under-fictionalized era to the forefront in women's fiction. I am getting a bit fatigued by all the WWII fiction over the past few years. It is refreshing to learn about a different time period. I knew nothing about the women of the Dust Bowl era and I'm happy I am able to learn about it from a well-loved author. Much like with The Great Alone, she chose to use her exceptional writing skills to illustrate a dark subject-matter with grace. History can be ugly, and yet she still manages to highlight some truly beautiful moments.

While working as a bookseller over a decade ago, I stumbled across a beautiful cover that evoked childhood memories and tugged at my heart. Yes, I know; we aren’t meant to judge books by their covers. But we all do, don’t we? I knew I needed to give this book a home, so I tucked it to the side and bought it after my shift.

That book was Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. I absolutely devoured it, and it devoured me right back. The writing, the character development, the plot; all of these perfectly done components combined to make me a lifelong fan of this author. I quickly found other books she’d written, and they gripped me in the same way Firefly did.

Kristin Hannah’s novels are the kind that stay with you long after you’ve closed the cover. I can still recall scenes from Firefly Lane, etched in to my mind as though it were a fond memory. This phenomena occurs over and over again as I read her novels; just glimpsing a cover can take me back to a certain scene, where I read it, and who I was when I read it.

The Four Winds is another beautifully crafted novel that will transport its reader across the plains. It follows Elsa, a woman who has always been told her life will be a certain way, as she breaks free of those constraints and strives to be who she believes she can be. The novel follows her path through the Dust Bowl and to California, where the four winds have pulled her to try and make a new life.

This book reaches into your heart and clenches it from the moment you meet Elsa. She is strong, capable, intelligent, and vastly undervalued. Elsa’s story is expansive and encompassing, told as she battles the inner battles forged from years of emotional abuse to the physical battles of surviving the Depression.

Elsa struggles to reconcile the American Dream promised to her with her reality of struggle, and must choose between fighting to survive or fighting to thrive.

Hannah’s writing is impeccable as ever, as she weaves this story through multiple timelines and narrators. The reader is dropped into 1930s Texas on the brink of the Depression and Dust Bowl, written in an enveloping way such that you can nearly feel the heat and taste the dust.

The characters are thoroughly developed and portrayed exquisitely. From the tempestuous teen to the callous parent to the potential amorous suitor, each character has depth and layers. The plot is intricately woven across space and time, guiding the reader through historic events in a delicate balance of providing the historical context without over-explaining.

Once again, Hannah will wrench your heart this way and that, so go into this one with tissues. These characters are ones that will stay with you, jumping back into your memory when you pass a field of wheat gently waving the in the breeze, or see a wide blue sky with just a hint of rain at the horizon.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of this book.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is available for preorder from your favorite bookseller, and will be released February 2, 2021.

I love Kristin Hannah! Her books transport me into history. This book set during the dustbowl and depression was so engrossing. I was so inspired by this book. I cant wait for it to come out so that my patrons will be able to read this wonderful book.