Author: Kristin Hannah
Publication Date: 2 February 2021
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Page Count: 464
Dates Read: Jan 20 – 21
Reading Method: Physical – BOTM Backlog
Review
Holy shit, I needed a hug after finishing The Four Winds. I should have known Kristin Hannah, the author of The Nightingale, was going to beat me over the head with all the emotions and yet, I still wasn’t ready for this book. Hannah has an amazing ability to bring everything the characters are feeling to life.
Elsa has had a very difficult life, and the drought doesn’t make anything easier. The farm where she lives with her family faces the same struggles seen across the country, but there is hope to be found in moving to California. Fighting her emotions, and struggling with the idea of leaving parts of her family behind, they make the move across the country to find a new, better life.
I felt every struggle Elsa faced and desperately just wanted things to work out for the best. There is SO MUCH hardship in this story, but it’s also a story of hope and doing whatever you must to take care of your family. The development of Elsa’s character is slow, but steady, and she has to be one of the strongest characters ever. By the end of the story, Elsa felt like a part of me I didn’t want to stop reading about.
The ending was a little strange, but it made sense. We have seen these characters struggle for years without an end in sight, and it makes figures that they would want to fight for a better future. It just felt like the second half of the book was its own thing – completely separate from the first half.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Four Winds and cannot wait to see what Hannah has in store for us next. I’m sure it’ll be just as heart-wrenching as her previous works.
About the Book
Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.
By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.
In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa―like so many of her neighbors―must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.
About the Author
Kristin Hannah is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale, Winter Garden, Night Road, and Firefly Lane.
Her novel, The Nightingale, has been published in 43 languages and is currently in movie production at TriStar Pictures, which also optioned her novel, The Great Alone. Her novel, Home Front has been optioned for film by 1492 Films (produced the Oscar-nominated The Help) with Chris Columbus attached to direct.
Kristin is a former-lawyer-turned writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Her novel, Firefly Lane, became a runaway bestseller in 2009, a touchstone novel that brought women together, and The Nightingale, in 2015 was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, iTunes, Library Journal, Paste, The Wall Street Journal and The Week. Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards. The audiobook of The Nightingale won the Audiobook of the Year Award in the fiction category.
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