Rheumatic fever left Elsa sickly and completely discounted by her family. Frustrated she goes out one night and meets Rafe, who showers her with affection. When she becomes pregnant, her family disowns her and Rafe’s family embraces her. The dustbowl and collapse of the farm, the dying animals, and loss of hope drives Rafe to drinking and leaving his wife and two children behind. Elsa’s son Anthony nearly dies from ingesting so much dust, so they leave for California and a promise of the American dream. This book is rich with characters, Hannah makes you feel the dirt on your clothes, the need to sweep inches of dust out each day, and so much dust one cannot breathe. Once they arrive in California, the conditions of the camp and those who are struggling to feed their families are heartbreaking. Big business and the Welty cotton plantation who barely pays them and makes them indebted to Welty is cruel. This book is wonderful, full of rich stories about the trials of the dustbowl and those who tried to make a difference.

After a bout of childhood fever which weakened her heart, Elsa is forced to retreat into herself and her bedroom and finds refuge in books. Deemed unmarriageable by her parents and believing herself to be unpretty, she fears that she will be alone forever. Encouraged by the memory of a supportive late uncle, Elsa dares to venture out where she meets Rafe Martinelli. An unexpected pregnancy leads to a shotgun wedding and an unhappy marriage. Postwar posterity ends as Texas plunges into draught and dust storms unlike the world has ever seen engulf the region. Elsa must find courage in order to save her children from the deadly storms and hunger. She ventures out across the country to find the American Promise in California, but soon learns that class status continue to keep her down. Essentially a re-telling of the Grapes of Wrath with strong female leads, The Four Winds mirrors Hannah's previous works and focus deeply on motherhood and survival

This book was a let down as I usually really like her books. The first 10% was depressing picturing a life without love growing up in a home where you are not attractive, not healthy therefore not loved or paid attention to. The next 10% was how dry the land was and how depressing that must have been, I'm sure, but I didn't need 10% of the book to drag on with how depressing it was.
Then I gave up. I was finding myself angry at the wasted time spent reading depressing stuff and decided instead of that, I'd just stop reading. Instantly feeling better, I moved on to another book. Maybe this one gets better later on, but I won't waste any time waiting for that.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

4 Stars
This is novel #17 for me. Yep I am a fan.
I read "Firefly Lane' back in early 2008 when it came out but I wasn’t on Goodreads at that time. I kept book journals with notes but never reposted.
Anyway I went into this story blind as I love this author. Her stories are typically sad
Although historical fiction, the characters are so real. You will love the Elsa; so want her to find happiness.
Story is on the top on the sad scale! In fact, this novel should come with a warning.
“Be prepared to cry and not sleep at night!”.

I always enjoy reading the “Author’s Notes’ which typically give us the background of the authors motivation for their story. I encourage readers be sure to why Ms. Hannah has to say.

Here is a bit of what she wrote:
She started this novel three years ago about hard times in America. She states, “Never did I
imagine the Great Depression would become so relevant in our modern lives.”
She goes on to say
We’ve gone through bad times before and survived, even thrived, History has shown us the
strength and durability of the human spirit.

She also offers a resource about the Dust Bowl years and/or the migrant experience in California on her web site KristinHannah.com

Want to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this eGalley. This file has been made available to me before publication in an early form for professional review purposes only. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for February 23, 2021

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for my review. I don't know how Kristin Hannah does it! Her books are always well researched, well written and are so unique! There is never a formula to her writing. This book is another great example of Hannah's diverse topics. This one follows the life of Elsa Martinelli, a woman defined by her choices and her inability to settle. This is her story of life during the Great Depression and dustbowl that threatened to take away everything, but she had the courage to push for something more and find something better for herself and her family. This book, although set in the 1930's, has a very modern and timely feel. I haven't found many modern books set in this time period so I found it fascinating! A great story!

My second favorite Kristin Hannah book!! While reading I was able to visualize everything I was reading. Gave me lots of feels

The whole story in this book seems forced. While I think it could have had wonderful potential the characters just don't come to life. The mother trying her hardest while thinking she's a lover. The daughter who wants to rebel against what her mother is like. The saccharine life lessons. It's just not good.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this.

Bleak and timely portrait of the plight migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression through the story of a woman who leaves Texas with her children to seek a better life in California. Once there, she finds deplorable living conditions and unfair and inhuman treatment of workers, while her teenage daughter is drawn to communism and the labor movement.

Though perhaps overly long and repetitive, with a tendency to tug at the heartstrings, this is a good choice for those who like immersive historical fiction with strong female characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

A few years back, I read Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale and was wowed. She made the story come alive. It was compulsively readable and emotionally charged.

When Hannah's The Great Alone came out, I was so excited to pick it up, expecting more of the same. The Great Alone was much less moving, much more forced feeling. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good, it leaned too heavily on the PTSD-Vietnam Vet angle and it just didn't payoff in the end for me. I chalked that up to a fluke.

When I received the chance to get an advance copy of The Four Winds, I had high hopes. From the struggle of the Great Depression and the Dustbowl, I thought there was a lot of material for Hannah to create another evocative and moving story. Unfortunately, I think this book misses the mark even more than The Great Alone did.

The Four Winds tells the story of Elsa Martinelli, from her young adulthood living in small town Texas, her time raising her children on a farm that is dealing with the effects of the Dustbowl, and then onto her trek across the country and tenure as a migrant farmworker in Central California.

There is a lot of "tell" and not "show" in this book. Every little thing is spelled out for you, rather than the story coming more organically from the movements of the characters. It feels like a first draft that could have used a little more polish.

None of the characters in this story feel real. Elsa is extremely self-effacing, always always always talking about how ugly she is and how she knows her parents and husband didn't love her enough. You feel for Elsa but you also want to scream "Wake up! Who cares about those losers?! Look at what you're dealing with here!" Loreda, her daughter, feels like an old man's idea of what a plucky young girl character should be like. She feels just as manufactored as Elsa but in the complete opposite direction. There's a constant call and response with Elsa and Loreda, from the very beginning of the book, where they are always meant to be mirror images on any and every issue.

The idea of communism as a response to the migrant farmworker plight comes up about halfway through the book. I see some reviewers were disturbed by that, which is pretty ironic considering that's how the ideas in the book are treated as well. I applaud Hannah for doing her research and inserting this historically accurate movement into the story but the way she does it feels forced. Elsa hates the idea of communism. Loreda is excited for the prospect--she's been checking books about communism out of the library with the help of a conveiently sympathetic librarin. Meanwhile Elsa just happens to be falling in love with the union organizer who wants Elsa to "be brave" and help him move the migrants towards unionizing. It's Norma Rae if Norma Rae was shocked by the mere word union, not to mention *gasp* communism.

I think The Four Winds is a timely story. If told well, I think people would really have empathized with the "othering" these migrants experienced, the financial devastation that people suffered, and glommed onto the idea that corporate greed pushed regular people to their breaking point. I get why Hannah chose to tell this story at this particular moment. I just wish she had done a better job. This felt like flat chick-lit rather than richly told historical fiction. I will most likely skip Hannah's next offering, unless the premise really grabs me.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a free advance copy in exchange for my review.

I have liked many of Hannah's books and this one was no exception. "The four winds have blown us here. people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land...." Well, the winds mostly blew the "Okies," refugees from the horrors of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. For me, the strength of this book is not so much in the story telling, the journey of a strong woman and her two children who leave their dust-stricken north Texas home for California, where they struggle with poverty, horrendous living conditions, food that seems to contain no vegetables beyond beans, no fruit, watered-down milk, and salami and hot dogs, and back-breaking work for greedy exploitative land owners. The strength of the book is in Hannah's beautiful writing, her descriptions of the landscape that are so vivid I felt the dirt in my eyes, nose and mouth, and her portrayal of strong females - grandmother, mother, and daughter. At times some of the story stretches the imagination beyond belief, such as our heroine's treatment by her family when she was in her teens and early twenties, and the ending, told through an epilog, is rushed and more of an outline than a fully-told story. In many ways this is a beautiful yet flawed book that tugs the heartstrings and brings tears to one's eyes even when it is not fully believable.

4.5 stars. Oh my goodness, did I love this book! I was very hesitant to request the ARC because this is not a time period that I normally read about and I wasn’t sure if it would hold my interest, but Kristin is such a phenomenal writer, that I found myself sucked into the story almost right away. I am so so so happy I got this book. Elsa’s story, strength and resilience were truly astounding and because of that, so was her daughter Lareda. Every character in this book was just written so well and really pulled at your heart strings. Although I knew about The Great Depression and the dust bowl and the economic impact it had on our country from school, reading this novel truly helped me understand the hardships of what really went on. I can’t even imagine. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC.

Kristin Hannah does it again! This story, set during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, reveals the strength and grit of Elsa Martinelli. Disowned by her family and abandoned by her husband, Elsa leaves her in-laws failed farm Texas farm in search of milk and honey in California. Life in a camp and migrant farm work help Elsa and her children learn of things far more important than earthly possessions.

love this book. just like all this authors books. very invested in the characters. love the historical aspect of the story. learn something new! a must for any book club! i highly recommend this book!

Not an easy read, but wow. This one will stay with me for a while.

Written in sparse but evocative prose that reminds me a bit of both Steinbeck and Wendell Berry, this work chronicles the deep and prolonged struggles of a woman trying to survive the Great Depression and Dust Bowl in the Texas panhandle and California cotton fields in the 1930s. It is at times unbearably bleak, and the trials Elsa goes through never stop their onslaught while she desperately tries to find and save herself and her family. Despite the difficulty and heartache, I found myself absolutely invested in Elsa's outcome and wanted her to ultimately find happiness and peace. And while I didn't get the tidy happy ending I wanted (because who does, really, in life?) she does in fact find her bearings in a way that is deeply satisfying.

You might think a book like this would not be enjoyable during our 2020 environs of pandemic/illness/death in headlines replete with hopelessness, political entrenchment, and rampant job loss. And you would be right. And if you, like me, have found yourself primarily drawn to comfort reads over the past year, you might set this aside. But that would be a mistake. This is not a comfort read, but it is a deep testament to the resilience of the human spirit. It is a love story and a survival story and a story of finding hope even when one cannot make a logical argument for hope. As Elsa's mother-in-law reminds her, "Remember, cara, hard times don't last. Land and family do." And she's right. For while even land and family can and do change with the forces of nature, illness, death, abandonment, or new love, the fundamental threads remain in our souls to bind us to the people and places where we are formed.

Kristin Hannah has done a masterful job in telling this story, and I am grateful to her for it. For the perspective of what people endured then, and for the contrast in backdrop to what people are enduring now. How many times in the last year have I looked around my small "starter" home and felt trapped, with my children who should be in a physical classroom underfoot and my spouse who should be at his office sharing space with me at the kitchen table as we try to cobble together work and school and supper on a tighter budget than I would prefer? But this morning, after finishing The Four Winds, I look around my home and at my family and at my bank account and all I can think is how Elsa would have marveled at the bounty and comfort of my life. This is not to say my struggles don't matter just because someone else in the world or in history once had it harder. They do. But perspective is everything, and I, for one, have found my personal worldview has fundamentally shifted a little upon finishing this book, and for the better. What better indicator than that as to a book's greatness?

From the preface to chapter 17, titled 1935: "We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure." - Cesar Chavez.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC. I have shared my truthful and unbiased review.

My parents, long deceased, grew up in the Great Depression, which profoundly shaped their lives. My life was not one of great privation or wondering how one could get through today, let alone tomorrow. This novel brings this era to life through Elsa, a deserted wife, left to raise two young children through some of the harshest times this country has ever faced. Her resolve to protect her family leads her to central California, on a quest to protect the health of her son. Life is no easier in California due to large scale immigration of swarms of people seeking a better life only to find the state and its citizens trying to stop the migrants in any way it could. This novel really led me to appreciate what my parents had endured, but also gave me insight into the first breath of rebellion among farm workers seeking a fair wage and decent living conditions. Elsa was a great example of the strong women who fiercely protected their families in the worst of times.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced reader copy. This is a heartbreaking, incredible story. As I read the story of Elsa Martinelli, I kept asking myself, it’s got to get better for her and her family, but it did not. Elsa and her family suffered enormous hardship during the dust storms of the 1930s in Texas. They left their family to go out west for a better life. Sadly, at every turn, Elsa and her family faced more difficulties than anyone should have endured. This is a story of resilience, love, the human spirit and how people face adversity. I really enjoyed this book; but it was a very difficult book to read. The sadness is greater with each page and the tears flowed. This novel will definitely be with me for many years.

The Four Winds is a quite depressing tale of a young woman and her family trying to survive the Great Depression, beginning in Texas, and then in the cotton fields of California. Elsa found herself pregnant and forced to marry the baby's father and move in with his family. Her husband leaves her to look for a better life. The conditions in Texas are horrible and the drought forces Elsa and her children to move to California to find work. What they find is an even harder life of social injustice and cruelty. The story has a bittersweet ending, but it took WAY too long to get there. I can't recommend this book because it's really a downer.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this book.

This beautifully written story about a woman named Elsa Martinelli in the 1930s. Elsa is a plain woman that finds herself caught in an unhappy life and forced into a marriage. Then we are introduced to the dust bowl. Hannah does an amazing job of describing the daily struggles of both humans and the land. This is an amazing book, so well written. But be forewarned, it will break your heart. Thank you to Netgalley for an advance readers copy for my honest review, I enjoyed every minute of reading this book.

Omg this was literally amazing. Considering there are so many summaries on here, I will skip that and jump straight to my thoughts.

I found this to be a very cohesive Kristin Hannah read; it gave a nod to her literary fiction roots while further exploring historical fiction. As always, she builds these worlds and characters that we love and want to protect at all costs. Told through two perspectives (mother and daughter) we follow this story of strength, resilience, and carving your own path in a cruel world. It's heavy and heartbreaking, but with that, I think she really encompassed the weight and struggle of The Great Depression.

I should note, this was not my favorite Kristin Hannah book (The Nightingale **sob**). But it's still five stars, incredible, and absolutely worth the read. Kristin Hannah did it again.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah.
A beautifully written book set during the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression. Elsa Martinelli is a very strong woman, but she doesn’t know it. Raised in a family that did not love her, she thinks little of herself. When she falls for the first boy, Rafe, to look her way, she finds herself pregnant and is discarded to the boy’s family. Elsa finally learns what it feels like to be loved in the home of her in-laws, Rose and Tony. However, Rafe doesn’t really love her as his plan to go to college was disrupted by her pregnancy. He fills their daughter’s head with dreams that seem out of reach. Loreda comes to resent her hard working, no fun mother and when Rafe leaves one night to head west Loreda can only blame her mother.

In very hard times when there is no rain, nothing grows and the winds blow, Elsa keeps putting one foot in front of the other to care for her family. When her young son, Ant, nearly dies of dust pneumonia, Elsa packs the truck with the 2 kids and heads west, leaving Rose and Tony behind, who refuse to leave their land. With the influx of so many Okies fleeing the Great Plains, life in California is no better however. Heart wrenching, at times hopeless, this is the story of a mother’s refusal to give up. Finding love, reconnecting with Loreda and Loreda’s regrets for not seeing her mother for who she was, this is an unforgettable story of love, courage and bravery.