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.

Another beautiful, heartbreaking book by Kristin Hannah! The Four Winds tells a story that everyone should read. I learned about the Dust Bowl in History class, but I don't think I appreciated how truly devastating it was. I can't exactly say I enjoyed this book...It was amazing, but I actually struggled to finish and took a few breaks because it was so depressing. Reading this, you'll truly feel each and every devastating setback the Martinellis face. I'm trying to think of how to explain why it was sadder than some of Kristin Hannah's other books that I loved, and all I can think of is that some of the worst things Elsa experiences are at the hands of her fellow Americans who decided she was an outsider and less than human, because she had fallen on hard times. I think it's difficult to read a book like this in the times we're living in when everything is so divided, but it's an important story to read anyway. I recommend reading it along with a lighter, happier book so you can give yourself some relief.

The Four Winds
by Kristin Hannah (Goodreads Author)
5768412


"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..."

Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is phenomenal. The above quotes sum up much of my feelings and thoughts regarding this book. I was fortunate to be permitted an early read and I thank the publisher, Kristin Hannah, and Net Galley for the opportunity.

Historical Fiction is one of my favorite genres but i had never read a book set in the time of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl phenomenon! This book is so well researched and written that I could feel the wind of my face, with bits of dirt stinging my eyes and feel the grit between my teeth. I also learned more that I had ever known about this time and history and what tremendous hardship and challenges the people on the Great Plains of America in the 1920s faced. Who had ever heard of dust pneumonia? But many people and animals actually suffered and died from this horrible condition.

It's also a message of hope in that we realize that humans have always faced challenges throughout history due to the changing environment and we have been successful, as a country, overcoming these events and occurring conditions.

This is also a story of women. And the friendships and love that women form even though the only thing they may have in common is that they are women. The characters and their relationships were very well developed and I came away continuing to think about these women and the joy they were still able to find in life regardless of their current circumstances.
5 stars for The Four Winds!

This is a story about the indomitable nature of

This book was beautiful & heartbreaking- filled with moments of light that contrast the bleak, tragic time period. This book explores the concept of relational capital during stark poverty. The author’s voice is lovely, and brings this testimony to resilience to life in an incredible way. Highly recommend!

Wow. Kristin Hannah does it again.

The Four Winds is an emotional gut-punch, but I honestly think in this time when we think we are experiencing such hardship in our country, reading about a family trying to survive the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression at the same time puts things into some perspective. We meet Elsa, a young woman who seems to be broken by life and the neglect of those who should love her most: her family. As the story progresses, she learns what it means to love and be loved and what “family” truly means.

Of course we readers can connect with the young Elsa who escapes in her books. I think it’s fitting that one of her favorite books was Pride and Prejudice, for in many ways, this could be an American tale of Pride and Prejudice.

I couldn’t put this book down, and like I said, I think reading this during our pandemic has put some perspective on what suffering and struggling to survive really looks like.

I highly recommend reading this book, and I also highly suggest having tissues handy. This book will require an emotional investment as you come to love Elsa, Lorena, Ant, Tony, Rose, Jack and so many more. Kristin Hannah once again writes a piece of historical fiction that leaves its imprint on our hearts.

You can always, always count on Kristin Hannah for a story that will push her characters to the brink and give them the opportunity to surprise themselves—and you—with strength far beyond what they thought they were capable of. The Four Winds is just such a novel, full of grit in every sense of the word.

Hannah transports us to the Texas panhandle in the era of The Dust Bowl, when one unusually audacious night in the life of a young woman changes the trajectory of her life on the precipice of The Great Depression and the region's infamously deadly ecological disaster. Through years of hardship and draught, dust storms and illness, poverty and heartbreak, we're swept into a fierce tale of motherhood, family (by blood, by marriage, and by choice), commitment, and courage when all seems lost. This richly painted history, with meticulous research that wholly brings another time and place alive on the page, resonates in unsettling ways today: How do we treat those seeking refuge? What harsh judgments might we make about people we don't want to know? And at what cost are we willing to stand up for what's right? Kristin Hannah has done it again. A must for fans of historical and women's fiction.

If you can only read one book this year then you picked the right one! I just loved this book and recommend it to all ages. It's so true and historic , you will learn so much about how people fought to live and work the land years ago. Just to put food on the table! It is such a great book! I rate it a high five and can't wait until the book is published because I will buy my mom a copy to read, She is 84 and this type book is what she loves. I think she has read everyone of Kristin Hannah's books. She will absolutely be entranced with this story. Do yourself a huge favor and get yourself a copy. Then read the book twice to be sure and enjoy it. Thank you so much publisher and Net galley for letting me read it.

"Love is what remains when everything else goes away". What an incredibly powerful novel. The plight of those effected by the Depression and the Dust Bowl is depicted in such a vivid and heartbreaking way.

This is the story of a woman who spent her childhood being told that she wasn't pretty enough or health enough to be loved. Just when she gets comfortable living the life of a farm wife and mother with her family, they are ravaged by the Dust Bowl. She needs to decide how to be brave and make the right decision for her family to keep them alive in the most desperate of times.

Not may books make me cry. This one did it. The trials Elsa is put through are devastating. This is a read that parallels our modern lives living through COVID. You don't realize how good we have it until you reflect on this bit of history.

Boy, Kristen Hannah really knows how to take us to a different world and completely engage our hearts along the way. This book is set in dust bowl Texas, then Great Depression California. The hardships that Elsa and her family endure are just unbelievable. A very educational, inspirational story. I’ve already ordered a hardback copy for my mom.

Elsa feels weak and unattractive; her parents tell her so. Destined for spinsterhood, she commits one rebellious act when she meets Tony, a handsome, younger man who finds her desirable. When her self-righteous parents discover she is pregnant, they drop her at Tony’s parents’ farm where she is accepted into the family. As years pass, she is loved and cherished, until Tony, unable to deal with the Depression and Texas dust storms, abandons them. She sets out with her children to California where they are treated as pariahs, along with the other migrants who have come from the four winds. She never abandons hope, symbolized by a lucky penny she carries. Kristin Hannah’s vivid descriptions of the elements they battle and the despicable living conditions of the camps are hard-going for the reader.at times. She offers, however, moments of light as we watch Elsa meet love again and finally find her voice.