The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

 Kristin Hannah’s historical fiction novels have become a “must read” for me as they come out.  I was very excited to read The Four Winds as part of the Brenda Novak Book Club – 2021 Reading Challenge.  She had a wonderful interview with Kristin Hannah last Thursday the 25^th that is available on Facebook.  It provides great insight into Hannah’s writing process and how she came up with the Four Winds.  I loved it!

 Elsa is a plain, unhappy, unloved, and unmarried daughter of a prosperous family in Texas in the 1920s.  One day she makes herself a red flapper dress, bobs her hair, and meets her husband.  Handsome Rafe has many dreams but settles down to raise a family with Elsa.   As the depression and then the Dust Bowl hit, the Martinelli family is hit with many difficult choices.  What will they do to survive?

 I loved the vivid portrait that Hannah painted of the Dust Bowl and the depression.  The very hard choices that people had to make for their family survival were devastating.  The ecological destruction wrought by the Dust Bowl helped to bring in new conservation practices that are still used to this day.  The travel from the shattered plains to California to then be treated like dirt was also heartbreaking.  People that proudly had their own farms or owned their own businesses were treated like trash and forced to live in tent cities.  The novel really humanized the situation.

 I LOVED the characters in this novel.  Elsa is a woman who had difficulty in self-confidence, but through the love of her children, she was able to work her hardest to survive.  I in particular loved her relationship with her in-laws and how they became her real parents.  I also loved the often-angry relationship she had with her 13-year-old daughter Loreda.  It rang as a true mother daughter relationship.  I loved that Elsa was doing her best, even when Loreda didn’t see it.

 I don’t want to ruin this book experience for others so I will not get further into the plot.  Like Hannah’s past few novels, I flew through this one and couldn’t put it down.  Tears were shed and emotions were felt.  I loved this novel.

 Favorite Quotes:

“Hope is a coin I carry:  an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love.”

 “Passion is a thunderstorm, there and gone.”

 “Elsa hadn’t known until right then how much difference a friend could make.  How one person could lift your spirit just enough to keep you upright.”

 “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.”

 “Life went on, even in the hardest of times.”

 Overall, The Four Winds is a gripping story that vividly paints the devastation caused by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Book Source:  Purchased from Amazon.com