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.

The Four Winds begins in 1921 when 25 year old spinster Elsa Wolcott, who’s denied love & acceptance by her upperclass family & feeling stifled in their home & her life, sleeps with Rafe Martinelli, an 18 year old Italian-American man.

Pregnant & summarily denounced by her family, Elsa is sent to marry & live with Rafe & his parents. Reflecting on the fact that she is not loved, still, Elsa resolves to give her baby the family & home she never had.

The book picks back up in 1934 where we learn the effects on Elsa of living in that kind of marriage & trying to keep a home & farm going. Then the dust storms & Great Depression get worse & that’s where the story really takes off.

The Four Winds makes it clear from the Prologue that it’s a story about women, & that’s what we get as Elsa tries to protect her family in TX & across the country in CA. Elsa’s story also becomes a migrant camp worker’s story. The parallels between then & now—when the rich get richer off the work & hardships of those who do the work, when politicians & police work to support the system that keeps rich white people rich—are strong.

Kristin Hannah is a masterful writer & my emotions were definitely engaged—but while Elsa & her arc are inspiring, her story also feels overtly representative in some ways, symbolic. I felt some distance from her. That feeling is underscored for me by the ending, which is well-written but which I didn’t like on a couple of different levels.

This isn’t my favorite of Hannah’s books, & I do have some quibbles, but it’s another stunning offering. I’m grateful that we have this exploration of the power & strength of women & mother-daughter relationships during one of the US’s most tumultuous moments. A story that gives hope & assurance of some kind in the good people are capable of even as it points out some of the worst acts of humanity.

4⭐️. The Four Winds is out on 02/02/21. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Beautifully written story about a courageous woman trying to survive during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era. It is heart breaking to see Elsa crave for love and acceptance in her own family. After being treated so poorly Elsa will prove to be a warrior in protecting her own children. Based on survival stories of people flooding into California during this time period, the discrimination shown is astonishing. This well researched novel flows well and is hard to put down. Readers will be drawn into this compelling story. Highly recommended!

Like The Nightingale, The Four Winds sported a narrative that was rather distant and emotionally restrained. Once again, I found it incredibly hard to relate to Hannah's main character, Elsa Martinelli (née Wolclott), with Hannah relaying all her characterization through telling and confining the showing to limited scenes with small spells of action to pull the plot along with the incredibly stilted dialogue.

Hannah's style is just not for me. Her reliance on the constantly moving story would normally be great, but she has no flare for realistic dialogue — her preference for dropping bell-tolling lines at the end of segments or chapters is exhausting in its predictability. And the tendency Hannah has of constantly dropping cultural references as mile markers are about as heavy handed as a sledgehammer to the skull. For instance, early in the book, Elsa gets bold (which is her break-from-character moment that catapults her into the rest of the story) and buys some red silk fabric which she decides to whip up into a flapper-style dress. It comes from out of nowhere, she doesn't fit in with anyone else in the town in this dress — even when she goes out late at night for some random bit of fun, it's a flash bang moment that serves a certain purpose in the story in propelling the plot forward for Hannah.

Hannah's style lacks too much nuance for my taste. If there's a decade-related Plains reference that screams 1930s, it's probably woven somewhere very clumsily into this story. All-in-all, this read like a slight twang-injected Wikipedia entry or textbook excerpt. I've already packed up the two physical books by Hannah that I owned and had not yet read, and given them to a friend.

Kristin Hannah has done it again. She perfectly uses words to describe the strength of the American spirit, the warrior nature of motherhood, and how love can change someone’s life.

Four Winds is a story of the “worst environmental disaster in our history; the collapse of our national economy; and the devastating effect of national unemployment.”It is about how people from the four corners of America were drawn together during a time of tragedy and hardship.

In a year like 2020, it was powerful to be reminded that our country has made it through hard times through hard work, ingenuity and leaning on each other. Family, love, and HOPE are what is important. This was the perfect book to end 2020. You will not be disappointed.

Wow, what an amazing book!!! Ms. Hannah has again given us an incredible story about perseverance, real life and love. What a timely book to have read during this ongoing pandemic crisis where Americans are once again in economic crisis with a few environment issues thrown in as well (wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes). She has managed to capture the destitute feelings of the migrants and farmers while at the same time showing their strength and resilience. The conditions those people in the thirties had to endure was criminal, living in shanty towns, no drinking water, little food and no real help, plus the prejudices of the people in the towns. It is just heartbreaking to think that people in a country as rich as the United States, had to endure those kinds of hardships. It is hard to imagine!. The only thing I wish we had found out is what happened to her uppity, mean and horrible family. You kind of get an idea but I would have liked to know exactly what happened to them!! If you want to read an extremely compelling story about a time in history that may be yet again just on the horizon this is the book for you. The thing I like about Kristin Hannah is that no two of her books are alike. Many authors become formulaic and you can't read too many in a row or they all run into one another and sound the same. Ms. Hannah does not fall into that category at all. Her books are all distinctly different and have such strong characters (in particular the women) in them. They are informative, compelling and a delight to read!!

Elsa Martinelli grew up financially comfortable but lonely and mistreated in the ways women have always been mistreated - scorned by her own family for a perceived lack of physical beauty, assumed to be frail and weak, limited by their ideas of what her intellect would allow. Knowing that she wanted more from life than the role of sickly spinster that her parents had assigned to her, she does something daring and scandalous that earns her banishment but also allows her to escape. She finds love and acceptance and family by working hard on a small farm. But that's just the beginning.

Elsa is a wife and a mother fighting to protect her children, her in-laws, and the land she has come to love when the Dust Bowl hits the midwest. She fights harder than anyone to hold on to the life she has created on the farm, but eventually, she has no choice but to leave Texas for California - a "land of milk and honey" where jobs were supposed to be plentiful. California, however, doesn't turn out to be what she had been led to believe. Yes, the choking, life-threatening dust is gone, but the migrants are treated with disdain and refused housing, service, and dignity. Wages are low, and most are trapped in the criminal cycle of working for a company that takes everything and more back for sub-standard housing and a form of modern-day slavery created by the company store. Throughout all of this, Elsa struggles to connect with her daughter, Loreda, who takes after her father - dreamers who are always hoping to leave, believing that the next place is finally the one where they will find everything they want. Loreda doesn't want to settle for what life hands her the way she believes that her mother has always done.

Thanks to her daughter, Elsa becomes a reluctant part of the labor movement. At first, she's uncomfortable going against authority, but she becomes more deeply involved in the movement she finally finds the love she never knew she deserved and discovers what she is truly capable of in order to protect her children and build a better life. A tragedy, however, is what it takes for Loreda to finally understand why Elsa seemed to settle in her life, why she was so attached to the land and family and Texas, and to learn that she was very wrong about her mother.

The Depression and Dust Bowl era is my least favorite historical period to read about, but Hannah has created a story that is gripping and vibrant despite the darkness of the period. My biggest complaint about this book is how well the story is built, but how quickly the final act happens. It's as if, when the ending arrived, Hannah needed to wrap it up as quickly as possible. It was unbalanced in details and depth of storytelling from earlier parts of the book, where some of the descriptions and details could even have been pared back and part of the book could have been sped up a bit to the benefit of keeping the story moving.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/😭😭😭😭😭. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is soooo good and soooo heartbreaking. I usually avoid books set during the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl due to their bleakness. But Elsa's fortitude to survive and protect her children woke me up at 2am several times over the holiday weekend in order to read just one more chapter. One of the top 5 books I've read this year, and I've read over 100. Thank you @netgalley for the ARC.

I’ve always been impressed by the fact that Kristin Hannah delves into different events in history and brings them to life with such vibrancy and very real, relatable characters. She’s done it with WWII, Vietnam and now the Dust Bowl. I read the Grapes of Wrath in high school, but that was the extent of my knowledge of this subject, so I was fascinated to read about it.

The story portrays a woman, Elsa, who lives with her family on the Texas panhandle in the 1930’s and must display extreme endurance and strength in order to take care of her family during this very difficult time in history. The depiction of her struggles is extremely well-written and absolutely heartbreaking at times. I felt like I really got to know and love Elsa and wanted to reach into the pages of the book to help her. What a horribly depressing time in history! And the parallels between how “okies” were treated by California residents then and how immigrants in our country are treated by some now was striking. History does indeed repeat itself.

Fans of Kristin Hannah and historical fiction in general will devour this.

The Four Winds is a book about the unbreakable American spirit. It is also about how poverty in America can crush and grind a person down. Even though this book takes place in the 1930s, it feels very timely. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Has been 2020 in a nutshell. Elsa Martinelli and her family are living in the Dust Bowl trying to survive. It’s very easy to fall in love with her, her family, and the people that come along during the events of this novel.

Kristin Hannah never disappoints! I do not know much about this time period beyond the fact the Great Depression took place. This book made me want to learn everything I could. Pick up the beautiful and heart breaking book!

Kristin Hannah novels are so hit and miss for me.

For instance, I absolutely loved Night Road...it's probably one of my all-time favorite books. Yet, I really fecking hated the The Nightingale.

And here's why...

Every time I read Hannah's historical fiction, I end up feeling as though she researches like a mad woman, jots down every tragedy she can find during that time period, and then destroys her main character by making her suffer through every. single. calamity.

It's too much.

This book was so horribly depressing, and was so full of misery and death (animals included...it's bad, friends), that I couldn't wait for it to end. There was zero enjoyment while reading this. Yes, it's well-written, and yes, Ms. Hannah knows how to ratchet up the tension...but man, balance is a good thing. The constant darkness is overwhelming.

The conclusion was completely predictable and emotionally manipulative. I know I was supposed to break down into devastated tears, but instead, I let out a huge sigh and rolled my eyes. Does that count?

I'm once again in the minority here, so read it...you know you want to.

TRIGGER WARNING: CONSTANT ANIMAL SUFFERING AND DEATH

2.5 starsAvailable February 2, 2021

Despite my less than enthusiastic review, I'd like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my review copy.

Worldwide life feels beyond difficult and stressful with the debilitating effects of the pandemic. Unemployment is catastrophic. Too many people are dying. Then I read Four Winds. In the Texas panhandle in the 1930s Elsa grows up in a well to do family who not only fail to love and accept her, but continually undermine her confidence. When she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, they totally reject her. She moves to a wheat farm, marries Tony -the father, and lives with him and his parents. His parents come to love and appreciate her, fostering her self confidence. She learns to be a loving mother.

In 1934 the dust bowl and the Great Depression are concurrently destroying the Martinelli’s farm. Elsa has loved her difficult life with her in laws despite the lack of affection in her marriage. Her two children mean everything to her. When her husband leaves and life gets even harder, how will this family survive? Unlike today there are no safety nets. This dark tale reminds us that it is bad for us now, but it could be so much worse.

I look forward to recommending this book to my book club and friends who love historical fiction. Kristin Hannah has another winner on her hands. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

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.

Have you ever read a book that is so well written and so all-encompassing that you feel terrible the whole time you read it? Because the worst stuff is happening in the book and there’s no hope and it’s just awful. But also so good that you can’t put it down? And things just keep getting worse and worse. So you keep reading because you can’t look away and it feels awful. Then, when you finish, you wish you could read the whole thing over again for the first time?

That’s The Four Winds. Elsa is dealing with a lot. And basically nothing good happens. First she’s an old maid, there’s the Dust Bowl, during The Great Depression. Then trouble with her marriage. I can’t say much, but it is so hard for Elsa to catch a break. It is painful. But in the best possible way.

The Four Winds is a richly drawn work of historical fiction that transports the reader to that moment in history. Hannah does this in a way not many authors can master and it’s breathtaking. Special thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review.

My review will be published on my blog, Women in Trouble Book Blog on January 2, 2021.

The Four Winds : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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😭😭😭😭😭<—— I am not ok. If you’ve read a KH novel then you know to get your tissue ready because you’re 100% going cry your eyes out. This story is a reminder of what I’ve come to love about KH writing , it’s draws you in and never let’s go. She weave a story that raw , and oh so heartbreaking . A story of family, lost, love and more lost.
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In this story we meet Elsa , who’s biggest desire is to be love and accepted . In her quest for acceptance she met got caught up with a young’s man with big dreams . In an instant they’re married and building a family . Elsa life is forever changed, she must adopted to his world , but when her husband disappeared and the land is going through a season of drought Elsa must make the decision to leave everything behind to create a better life for children .
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Y’all, Elsa went through it. She’s the poster children for “ if it’s not one things, it’s another “, blows after blows she faces until the very end. My goodness , life is unfair .
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I enjoy this novel , my only regret is that we didn’t get to know more about Elsa growing up and her life as a newly Wed. And that ending , KH whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy??????? What did we do to deserve this ? 😭😭😭😭I just know that I’m going to experiences book hangover . I need a few week .