I love Kristin Hannah’s writing, and this story solidifies that even more. I found myself crying with, and rooting the Martinelli family and their friends. I found myself furious with the way they were treated. I absolutely loved the writing, and found myself re-reading passages over and over.

“The Four Winds” was a modern author’s telling of the struggles the South & West portions of the US during the 1930s. It provided a great historical perspective. Credit to Kristin Hannah for painting a clear verbal picture. Reading the account of the terrible conditions in Texas during the Dust Bowl left me feeling dry and dirty.
The first third of the novel evoked a range of emotions as it unfolded. I went from sympathy to frustration to admiration for Elsa’s early years. As tough decisions had to be made, I finally found a comfortable view of her which lasted through the novel.
Some of the characters seemed contrived but it kept the story from being a completely dark story.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for an honest review.

Elsa is a character for the ages! Not since Grapes of Wrath have I read something that touched on the Dust Bowl and that era of American history with the sensitivity and heart that this subject sorely needs. I could taste the dust in my mouth and felt it was not only a touching rendering of family life in that era, but also very timely as well. When so many are worried about where their next meals might come, this felt not as much like fiction at times. As a middle aged woman who sometimes worries about how effectual she is at parenthood, I identified with Elsa's great love for her family (and her inability to see anything extraordinary within herself).

Oh my, this book had me sobbing! Like for real tears and snot streaming down my face. I loved it, it was wonderful. 5 stars go pre order it from your local book store.
I'm not the kind of person that cries at everything so when I book makes me cry that's really powerful. To bring me to tears a book would have to be beautifully written and intricately crafted, and as you would expect if you are familiar with Hannah's work, it was. The descriptions are so vivid that you feel transported and the characters are so well written that they feel alive. But ultimately Hannah has a gift for exposing her readers hearts through her writing.
I loved reading about the dustbowl and the great depression because it's a time in history that I haven't read much about. We studied it in Highschool but reading it now, from the perspective of a mother as well as through the lense of our current health and racial and political issues just brought it that much more alive. Honestly I know this review is barely even making sense and I'm sure I'll come back and rewrite it when I come out of my book hangover, but bottom line this this book is amazing and you better go preorder it.

Kristen Hannah is one of those authors whom you don't question if you are going to buy her books - rather, you just DO. In this case, I was lucky enough to get an E-galley of her newest book, The Four Winds. Breathless and full of excitement, I downloaded it and raced through it in one day. It was an amazing work.

This book takes place during the Great Depression, more specifically, The Dust Bowl era.

I didn't know too much about The Dust Bowl era. This book was very informative, while also being extremely interesting to read.

Highly recommended.

I was super excited when I was approved. I savored the read, anticipating it. I began reading and it stalled. I finally finished it, but it’s not what expected. Every two years I eagerly await Hannah’s newest book. This one began with such promise. I hair had difficulty sticking with the story. It’s not my favorite and while I didn’t dislike it I didn’t love it either. There are many parallels with contemporary times: economic uncertainty, fear, and loss. I guess I’ve had my fill of all those things and didn’t want to read about endless loss and tragedy. Hannah does an excellent job of recreating the barrenness of the Dustbowl, people’s fear, desperation, and poverty, the choices and sacrifices they were forced to make. I think if I had read this book in a good year, any year besides 2020, I would have liked it better.

3.75/5 Right now may not have been the best time for me to read this one. I'm grateful to the publishers and netgalley for the opportunity to read an early copy.
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It's getting lots of 5⭐ reviews on Goodreads so don't let my lack of enthusiasm deter you, especially if you're a Hannah fan. For me, it was sad and frustrating and hours of desperate, hopeless reading.
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I appreciate that Hannah took on a different era of history than we've seen in popular historical fiction but it felt flat and drawn out to me. I was skimming by the end. I think this one will strike the heart and emotions for many. To me, the story is desperate in many ways - both good and bad. It follows one woman, Elsa (it took me a while to get Frozen out of my head and take her seriously), as she navigates adulthood in the midst of the 1920s-30s, a victim of the devastation wrought by The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. I honestly know very little about this aspect of those days and for that reason I appreciate her use of fiction to add humanity back into history.
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Read it. Think about the many ways it can relate in our modern lives and mindset about how we view others. In my own personal desire for hope and joy and positivity right now, it was too much, well, Life. It's why it's good and also why I didn't love it.

Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My review opinion is my own.

This is a retelling of the dust bowl era as with the classic Grapes Of Wrath. This is a story of one woman Elsa during the dust bowl era in the Panhandle of Texas. A unloved abused daughter languishing away in a life where she does not belong hides in her books. When she steps out for one night and then becomes pregnant her life changes in unexpected ways. She leaves her parents abusive household and enters into a marriage with a man she does not know yet comes to love. She eventually has two daughters and is sustained by her marriage and her in laws who treat her as family. .She begins to value her own worth for the first time in her life and know her own strength. Through her growth into a young wife and Mother the dust bowl hits the Panhandle and Elsa has to make the choice to take her family to California.

The author does so deftly portray the hardships of Texas Panhandle in the dust bowl and the great depression. She vividly describes for the reader the lack of food, the dust storms, the heartbreaking loss of precious. crops , The reader has a sense of their desperate lack of hope and tenacity of the dust bowl Americans. How they survived on so little and kept their faith throughout the hardship. Elsa and her young family decide to move to California and endure new hardships during that trip. Once the difficult trip to California is over Elsa and her young family endure many more unforeseen hardships which mirror the truth of this time in history . Throughout each period of time Elsa grows into a women of strength and charcter.

I was pleased to read this for review. It is a wonderful telling of American history . This is a very talented author and I look forward to her next work.

As the Great Depression racks America, a broken family fights to regain hope and opportunity- this is America after all.

Elsa Martinelli was unloved by her parents, abandoned by her husband, forced to leave her ravaged home in the Texas Panhandle with her two children during the worst economic depression American had ever seen. With a heart full of determination and love for her family, she will work and fight for a better life in California. At least that was the idea. She arrives in a camp of dirty, poverty stricken migrant workers, living in tents, barely able to feed and care for her children. What will it take to fight the farmer owners, coppers, and state officials that need to hold their power over these workers and give her children a fighting change. With ten workers for every one job, their progress seems impossible.

In the heart-breaking emotional struggle to take back their humanity from the powerful people who treat them worse than dogs, Kristin Hannah awakens our humanness and hope for a better tomorrow. Staggering and often painful, the experiences her characters endure at the hands of those with money- awaken our own sense of right and wrong in the upside-down world we are currently living in.

Poignant. Timely. This book will open your heart, increase your awareness, and break down your personal boundaries with the battles inside poverty and the idea of hope in America!

This wasn’t my first Kristin Hannah read and will be one of my favorites for quite some time. Although it didn’t quite reach the heights that The Nightingale did, I loved this book.

It taught me about a tough time in American history that I didn’t know a lot about. I found I continued to research more about the Dust Bowl the further along I read.

It was definitely a tough and heavy read and I’m glad that there were glimmers of happiness for Elsa.

I have never been to Texas's plains, but this new novel gave me an understanding of the hell the people went through in the '30s. It began with the national depression. Elsinore Martinelli was married with two young children and living on her husband's family farm. Elsa, not accustomed to doing physical labor, adjusted well to her new life, learning to milk Bella, the cow, and doing other chores while caring for her children.

Life on a farm was suitable for Elsa. Her new in-laws accepted her, and she felt she was happy. Elsa's husband disagreed. He wanted a more exciting life that didn't include physical labor in a place with no future in his dreamscape. Unfortunately, as the family dynamic changed, a drought made agriculture impossible, and the dust storms that would make their lives barely livable began and came frequently.

The dust bowl era began, and with that, the novel became a detailed account of living in hell. I can't even imagine what a storm with sand coming up through the floors and down the walls could be. The family not only couldn't farm, but they could also barely survive the ravages of sand covering them in mountain-like amounts.

This novel gave me insights into the pain that thousands of families suffered through at a time just before heading into another world war. It gave me pause and helped me see that humankind will always have natural disasters to deal with, and having the love of a family and strong hearts and minds are our only way to get through them.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this e-ARC to be published on February 9th.

I really, really liked this book, but I have to say—Kristin Hannah is one brutal, unflinching, unhappy book away from me writing her off as a (better) Jodi Picoult. I have nothing against brutal, unflinching novels that don’t wrap up with a pretty bow but honestly you’re gonna have to give me more variety than this. I am very glad of how she portrayed how people end up radicalized and hope that this book teaches people things.

Another Great Kristen Hannah novel. A story with historical significance that lends itself to modern times. When believing in the American dream was all people had left to cling onto.
A poignant story of family, struggle, and survival. A mother’s love for her children on a land she loves but that cannot sustain them and is likely to kill them to a hostile environment of people who try to suppress them. How to survive, how to to brave in the face of hunger and hatred. A book worth reading for the times we live in.

While it did take me a little bit to get into this book, I have not been on such an emotional journey with a character is a very long time! This story told through the eyes of a mother and daughter in the 30's brought to life the real challenges families faced during the depression and after. History, love, grit, family, heartache, and self-perception - this book has it all! Highly recommend!

The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah is a riveting novel, set during the time of the Depression and great Dust Bowl in the panhandle of Texas. Elsa Wolcott is raised in a wealthy family, but is shown no love during her childhood. She is a 25 year old, 6 foot tall, gawky woman when we meet her, who wants nothing more than to find love. While not finding love, she does manage to find a husband after finding herself pregnant and her family forces her to marry and disowns her. While the marriage is not what she hopes for, she does find love from her new in-laws and gives birth to a daughter and later a son. Then the Dust Bowl arrives and destroys the farm they live on and everything around them. They live through incredible storms and hardship, Elsa's husband leaves to find work in California and never returns and eventually Elsa must take the children and move west to find a better life for them. Arriving in California, where everything is green and beautiful, Elsa discovers conditions are not better for those considered "Okies". They are a drain on the state coffers, residents are resentful and farmers take advantage of them, paying their wages with "chits" that they can only cash in company stores for merchandise that is astronomically overpriced. It is a horrible life that can not get better and there is no way to get out.

Hannah's novel is striking for those of us who only knew the outlines of the history of the Dust Bowl, but not how it truly affected everyday life...it was horrifying. I don't know that I would have had the strength or courage to survive. I could not put this novel down and it made a huge impact on me, especially in this season of Covid and our changed world. Thank you to the author, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am a HUGE Kristen Hannah fan, so I was very excited to get an ARC of this through my #NetGalley account. This book did not disappoint. I will admit that reading this in the midst of COVID was difficult. I saw so many parallels to current events taking place in our country.

I was amazed by the HOPE that Elsa and her in-laws were forced to draw upon time and time again through this epic tale. The story is set in the midwest during the 1930's Dust Bowl and California Migration. Elsa is faced repeatedly with events that make her dig deep into who she is and be strong for those she loves more than life itself. When she finally finds her voice, I wanted to shout with joy, but instead, in Kristen Hannah's fashion, I was brought to body shaking sobs.

I was excited to receive an ARC from Netgalley of this highly-anticipated new novel -- I loved reading The Great Alone last year and The Nightingale is one of the best books I've read in the last decade. Like Kristin Hannah's other novels, The Four Winds does not disappoint.

Elsa Martinelli is the unlikely heroine of Hannah's latest saga, which takes place during the Great Depression. The sickly, unloved daughter of a wealthy family in a small town on the Great Plains, she'll need to overcome many obstacles to survive both her family's neglect, her disgrace after a shotgun wedding with a young man she barely knows, and the Dust Bowl.

The plot of this novel could easily have devolved into a mediocre and schmaltzy piece of historical fiction, but Hannah's careful research of the era and her talent with words kept me eagerly turning pages right up to the end of the book. I learned so much about the impact the Depression had on farmers and migrant workers and was shocked to read about the way more fortunate Americans turned on the families who had lost everything during that time. I often stopped while reading to look at photos from the Depression, which matched up perfectly with Hannah's descriptions. I finished the book with a better understanding of this important and tragic time in our history -- It felt especially timely now, as America slogs its way through a pandemic, social unrest, and economic crisis.

Kristin Hannah fans will love The Four Winds and so will fans of historical fiction. While it's not Hannah's best work, it's definitely engrossing and worth digging into.

This is a very interesting read about oppression and prejudice that took place in the 1930s. Fair warning the main character starts off with a pretty sad life and it mostly gets much worse. Elsa is a 25 year old daughter of wealthy parents who treat her poorly, she marries into a farm family where work is hard. When the environment is bad for her sons health, she moves to California hoping to find farm work. There we learn about workers rights and union organization. Despite all of this, the ending is uplifting, providing us with hope. I highly recommend this book to those who want to live outside their comfort zone for awhile. I also enjoyed a lot of the food scenes. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

"Sorrow lacerates my skin and I don't feel the pain." (Unknown)

And sorrow, hopelessness, tragedy, and loss were served up in heaping amounts to our grandparents and great-grandparents on a daily basis during the Great Depression. Mother Nature laced the countrysides with dust storms so thick that breathing became a struggle to survive and grit filled the air with darkness embedding itself into every corner of every life.

The Four Winds is a heavy, brutal read. Know this going in as we, as readers, try to make it through this unspeakable pandemic. Perhaps our own Covid stories will be passed down to generations hereafter. But know this to be true that we rise up each day meeting those challenges because of those who came before us. They moved through the pain........It only made them more resilient. Hope was in their hearts even though it wasn't always on their lips.

Elsa Wolcott never knew love. Period. Her parents constantly reminded her that a gangly six-foot woman would be cast into the role of spinsterhood especially in the Panhandle of Texas in 1921. Every day brought a litany of her shortcomings. But Elsa broke free from one darkened existence into the uncertainty of another.

It's 1934 on a wheat farm in the Panhandle where we find Elsa married to a dreamer named Rafe Martinelli. Rafe's parents, Rosa and Tony, own the farm and cherish their two grandchildren, Loreda and Anthony. Lush fields of wheat and corn of the Great Plains will soon wither under the strain of a monumental drought and oppressive temperatures. The dust storms left hardly a living thing in its aftermath including their livestock and their livelihoods. People abandoned their homes, farms, or the banks took over. Water was a prized commodity.

Fliers were sent out beckoning people to come to California for work. Elsa and her family take to the roads in search of a better life. Kristin Hannah spreads out her story far and wide. It is filled with hardships as Elsa and her family become workers on big farms owned by men seeking only profits at the expense of the laborers. We will experience the long hard fight for workers' rights through the eyes and calloused hands of Elsa.

We turn pages here never fully realizing that this was reality during that era in history. Would we or could we have survived what they did? An honest answer may lie within us.

I received a copy of The Four Winds through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to St. Martin's Press and to the talented Kristin Hannah for the opportunity.

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.