Kristin Hannah writes such gripping and captivating stories and this one is no different. The Four Winds follows Elsa Martinelli and her family as they live during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl in Texas. Elsa, the main character, was someone you were rooting for during the entire book. You wanted her to realize her courageous spirit that was simmering below the surface. You wanted her to find her happiness. And as a mother, you felt her struggle to hold it all together in a time when everything was falling apart. This book was a journey in her self-realization.

Kristin Hannah wrote an amazing group of characters and really embodied what the world was like during this time in our history. You felt all the emotions the characters were feeling. You felt the desperation and the determination. The story is heartbreaking and inspiring. This book is a great read with all the feels. If you have liked any of Kristin Hannah’s other books, you will love this one.

464 pages

5 stars

Elsa is a unique character. She is the product of a racist and unbending family and the trauma of her childhood gave Elsa a skewed sense of what love is. Told she was unattractive and too tall, too thin, etc she had very low self-esteem and expectations looking forward. Thinking she was unloveable, she had no expectations and only knew hard work. Steely determination carried her through the hardships. She hardly thought of herself as courageous, but she was.

She falls wildly in “love” with a younger man (I put that in quotes, because she doesn't know what love really is until later in her life.) For her trouble, she is shunned and driven out of the family.

She, however, finds a true family in her husband Rafe's mother and father Rosa and Tony. They live on a huge farm in Texas and mainly grow wheat. The land is everything to them and it becomes so for Elsa. Rafe doesn't agree. He is a dreamer and he teaches their daughter to dream as well. This causes problems with Elsa and she becomes a teenager.

The draught begins. For several years there is very little or no rain. The crops die, the dirt blows ceaselessly. The animals die, the land dies. Hope is lost. People begin to move West.

Elsa and her children join the trek to California but it is not the paradise they expected. They find homelessness and hardship. Living in a tent city, begging for scraps, they inhabitants treat them badly. They can't even get help at a hospital in times of emergency.

This book is remarkably well written and plotted. The characters are very real. I can see the conditions for myself as Ms. Hannah's descriptions are so vivid and colorful. Elsa was difficult to like in some ways. I felt compassion at her upbringing and extreme anger at her birth family. What horrible people! But she was fiercely loyal. For someone who never finished high school, she was very intelligent and determined to do right by her children. I decided in the end that I liked her.

I want to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for forwarding to me a copy of this wonderful book for me to read, enjoy and review.

Full review online in February.

THE FOUR WINDS is a good read, but definitely not a light read. Set in the dust bowl and the Great Depression, it is very sad; and the feeling of sadness and hopelessness never left me as I kept reading. The writing is absolutely beautiful, with parts of the book bringing me to tears. Some of it reminded me of what we are experiencing in today’s world. Yet the indomitable spirits of Elsa Martinelli and her daughter Loreda were what drove the story forward, along with the love of their extended family.

This is a must read for all lovers of historical fiction and especially Kristin Hannah fans,