Name: Rachel Kanyid's review of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Item: The Four Winds
Rating: 5
Author: Rachel Kanyid

Kristin Hannah

An epic, sweeping tale of love and loss set in the midst of the Great Depression in 1930s America, by the multi-million-copy global bestseller Kristin Hannah.

The Four Winds

Jordan Peet

Rachel Kanyid

Kristen Claiborn

** spoiler alert **
            This is currently my favorite book of 2021. I even went back to re-read it, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. It's almost impossible for me to describe everything this book made me feel, but I'll do my best. 
 The way that Elsa was treated by her parents made me sick to my stomach. I can quite figure out why you would be so hurtful to one of your children, no matter what time period, what she looks like, what illness she might have had when she was little. The actions Elsa took that led her to the Martinelli family make perfect sense after being treated so hatefully by her own parents. The Martinellis turned into the family she needed, even though her husband was a piece of garbage. Who just bails on their wife and kids like that??? The decision that Elsa had to make to leave the farm, and the Martinellis, had to be one of the most difficult decisions she had ever made. The bravery it took her to drive from Texas to California, the lone adult with two children, into a completely unknown situation, was awe inspiring. Hannah did a wonderful job of pointing out that our country has a long and disgusting history of prejudice. I rooted for Elsa every page of that book. 
 I thoroughly enjoyed how much Elsa's life was driven by books, which is something I completely related to. I spent most of the book wanting to jump into the pages and shake her daughter, Loreda, for the way that young girl treated her mother. I was glad that at the end, Loreda finally learned to respect Elsa, but sad that it happened right before her mother was killed. 
 I was pretty happy that Loreda made it back to the family's farm...but I was really disappointed that we never found out what happened to Rafe.

Lyric Hooey

I really loved the last few chapters, I wish that would have been a longer portion of the book. However most of the book was extremely depressing, which to be fair the book is about the Great Depression, but I just kept hoping for one good thing to happen, literally anything… and it took almost the whole book to get there! It just wasn’t for me, I think. I usually love Kristin Hannah.

Katelyn Sykes

I did not know much about the dust bowl era going into this book and this book was enjoyable and informative. I have yet to read a book by Kristen Hannah that I did not thoroughly enjoy.

Another 5 stars for Kristen Hannah.

Sofia Arcângelo 

As always Kristin Hannah presents a captivating story that sucks you in from the very beginning and leaves you wanting more and more. 
This story of courage and resilience shows you Elsa's life, a woman that will do anything for her family through extreme poverty and hardship. She teaches her daughter, with whom she has a special link, courage, love and determination. 
This deeply moving historic romance that describes a dark moment in USA's history, will touch your heart and at the same time show you the greed and prejudice of the ones who have so much and the empathy and generosity of the ones who have nothing.

Megan Snodgrass

4.25

I've seen a lot of people compare this to Grapes of Wrath so it's probably good I haven't read it (Don't come for me). This book flew by on audio for me. I thought I understood the perils of the Great Depression but I was wrong, especially in the case of the dust bowl. To read about the dust storms, sleeping in gas masks, seeing the land and animals die around you.. it was all so visceral and spoke beautifully to the tenacity of the farmers during that time. It broke my heart every time they had hope it'd get better knowing full well the Depression lasted for 10 years. Like many farmers, the Martinelli's were stuck between potentially dying of dust pneumonia or trying their chances out west. Of course, things weren't much better in California, the land of milk and honey, and I loved that we got a taste of what eventually led to so many reforms, workers laws, etc. 

As much as I love the zoomed in historical view of the events that happened, I'd be remiss if I didn't also touch on the beautiful, complicated relationships Hannah created. At the heart of the story was Elsa, who grew up in a family devoid of any love for 25 years. Through circumstance she's thrust into the Martinelli family where she develops a deep bond with their family/land, creates a family of her own, and finally understands what it feels like to love and be loved. That love is what drives her survival instincts, and she'll do anything to protect those around her. This of course causes some friction between her dreamer, feisty daughter Loreda, as Loreda grows to understand a mothers love and sacrifice. If y'all read any of my reviews you know I'm a GLUTTON for generational/family dramas so I ate this piece up, especially the complicated mother-daughter relationship she exquisitely lays out.

Siya S

This book was intense. It's about a lot of things, from draught to famine; to an economic crisis; to hardships; to women's relationships. But most of all, it's about mother's love. How it could stretch wide against all challenges, time, and space. An unreplaceable substance made of sacrifice and determination. 

Full review to come.

Taylor Sanford

Oh my word. This book had me so emotionally invested from the very beginning. It made me laugh and cry and really think deeply. I will be considering the things of this book for a long while after it's back on the shelf.

Cheri McElroy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

”A warrior believes in an end she can't see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me." 

So...The Four Winds. Set in Texas and California during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, this is the powerful story of Elsa Martinelli, a "mother, daughter, survivor, and warrior," and the lengths she will go to for her children. For herself. For Love.

Get this book. Please read it and let it work its magic on you.

 In the end, "love is what remains."

ETA: There are many similarities to The Grapes of Wrath. The circumstances that affected migrant people working in California are here, as the frame of the plot. I found this story to be more about women and more hopeful.

Kaitlyn Lundebrek

I loved this book so much. The ending made me cry yet left me feeling happy and hopeful.

Previously read the Nightengale which I really enjoyed.     This one is equally well written but bleak and not a dissimilar theme.     Found I was speed reading a bit to get through.   Would read this author again but may be more careful in choice.

Suzanne Owens

Barbara Williford

The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were “hard times in America: the worst environmental disaster in our history; the collapse of the economy; the effect of massive unemployment.” Kristen Hannah unravels the hardships of American families, especially those in the great plans through the story of Elsa Martinelli. Elsa was always the invisible, unloved and under appreciated daughter and sister. Through her struggle with abandonment, the Great depression and all the challenges that she faced trying to provide for her family as a single mother, she finally finds her voice. This is an very enlightening book about these dark days in American history. A moving, must read novel.

Kelsey Novak

Such an incredibly sad and heartbreaking story.

Jordan /

This book was really sad.. I wish Elsa could have experienced more joy and happiness through the story/her life.

Ethan Hill

This was good! It definitely took it's time getting going (I didn't really get invested until about 200 pages in) but I really like the direction it took after that point. Elsie and Loreda were well-rounded characters that were easy to root for and the ending, while it didn't make me cry like everybody else, did feel like it earned it's emotional payoff.

Alex Flagg

4.5 stars....all I can say for the moment is very sad

courtney garrison

The first half of this book I admit was slow and meh. But as the second half came in I was fascinated with the characters and story. The writing and descriptions of the dust bowl are fantastic yet horrifying. I’ve learned some about the dust fowl growing up and I genuinely couldn’t imagine the hardships these people faced. Elsa and her character growth are immensely huge. You start with Elsa at 25 wanting nothing more than to find love and want a family. Soon she meets a boy and her world is turn upside down. Elsa and her children are out through hell throughout this book. They travel from Texas to California in hope of a better life as the dust ravaged their farm. What they get when they get to California is prejudice, horrible living conditions, and low pay. The journey watching Elsa grow and find her voice is amazing and seeing her go from this very shy closed off girl to a powerhouse of a woman. She endured her parents abuse, the dust bowl, abandonment, etc. I admire her as a woman everything she went through. This story is one of my favorites and why I love Kristin Hannah. Her writing is just beautiful and the stories she writes have a way of sticking with you. 
I would have rated this 5 stars, but the second half you meet a character in the story and I don’t quite understand why the author infused it so much in the story and repeatedly told the reader that the character was communist. I don’t believe in the ideology myself( to each is own) but it being repeated over and over got really old. 
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Trigger Warnings - parental abuse, abandonment, animal death, beatings, death, parental death, parent abandonment.

Katie Ravenwood

This book is so beautifully written, and contains some of the most vivid and harrowing descriptions I've ever read of life in the Dust Bowl and what led its residents to flee to California during the Depression. Hannah's characters ensnare your heart with the breadth of emotion and motivation throughout the story, and I found myself cursing and cheering them until the very last words. In addition to the book itself, I would also recommend listening to Kristin Hannah's excellent interview at the end of the audiobook, in which she talks about her process of writing. I found it really illuminated the images and choices in the book as well as how the story was formed.

Eliza Gonzalez

me, at 92 percent: historical fiction is good for my soul
me, at 95 percent: 👺🔪🚫✋

I loved this book for most of it, but I was not happy with the ending. And it's one of those deals where the ending disappoints you so much that you're not sure if you even like the book anymore, if you'd ever recommend it. 

It is in a loose way comparable to Game of Thrones. You watch the characters deal with so much hardship, struggling the entire way, one tragedy barreling into the next.... and you keep waiting for the relief. You keep waiting for the moment that made it all worth it, as the audience, to have stuck through all that. But you never get it. Mostly it's just tragedy, and any "happy endings" achieved feel false and hollow. 

Like Game of Thrones, at the end of this I just felt angry. There was no point to any of it. It's ruined itself.

Now, aside from the ending, there were problems I did have, but I was enjoying myself enough that they didn't bother me very much.

– There is a repetition problem. Many times I got to a sentence that I was sure I read before. Twice, I even wondered if I accidentally went back to a previous passage while holding my phone. Hannah had the tendency to describe something or someone in a way we had already heard before and it really pulled me put of the story.

– The romance was underdeveloped as usual. We are not given enough time or scenes with the two characters meant to have fallen in love to warrant their feelings. 

– The romantic interest was the least realistic of all characters in the story, simply existing to be helpful and good with nary a flaw in sight. He felt like a plot device more than a person.

– The relationship between the daughter and mother felt flip-floppy in some instances. I wish we had spent some time in Loreda's head during moments of realization for her mother's character, her kindness, her courage, how loved she was and how unkind she had been. We get the acknowledgement from Loreda eventually, but we don't actively see the realizations, the moments that reshaped her view. 

By and large, this was a good book with a poor ending. I definitely want to give her other works a try, but this one missed the mark for me. 


Plot Concept: 4/5

Plot Execution: 4/5

Pacing: 4/5

Ending: 1/5

Writing: 4/5

Characters: 3/5

Romance: 0/5

Overall Enjoyability: 3/5

Kerry Kalinoski

I kinda knew where this one was going the whole time. It was a good story and kept me interested it just didn’t have that extra bit of excitement that I love in Kristin Hannah books.

Julia

Victoria Justice

The Four Winds is set in 1930s America, in the thick of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. It tells the journey of Elsa and her two children, as they fight for survival against the hardship and injustice stacked up against them.

The driving force of this novel is Elsa and her transformation from invalidated and forgotten girl to powerful and liberating mother. It helps show the strength and resilience of women, in a time when their voice wasn't heard but their presence should have been felt.

However, the underlying message of this book is the mother and daughter relationship, and how unwavering it can be when nurtured properly. The contrast between Elsa's relationship with her own mother in the beginning, and her stance as a mother to both her children, but especially Loreda is woven throughout and makes the ending of the book pull at your heart strings.

While The Four Winds started out as a slow read for me, the power in the words and characters in this book pushed me through the pages right to the emotional but hopeful ending.

Jordan Peet &
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

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