... a captivating, heartbreaking tale of a family who will do anything for one another—and everything to survive. The strength of Hannah’s prose brings the characters to life in a way that will make you unable to tear yourself away from them. You will celebrate their triumphs, mourn their tragedies, and commend their bravery. Through it all, it is easy to feel Hannah’s desire to honor those who lived and fought through this devastating time in history. The Four Winds is also an ode to the strength and ferocity of mothers, and a declaration that sometimes, love is the only thing that holds us together.
This exquisite novel follows Elsa through nearly two decades of hardship, including the Dust Bowl, droughts, the Great Depression, migrant farming in California, and a devastating flood ... Through Elsa's eyes, readers travel through the Great Depression era and experience firsthand the difficulties faced in the Great Plains. Historical fiction readers will become immersed in this poignant story by Hannah...and will enjoy witnessing Elsa's transformation from fragile, insecure girl to fearless, resilient woman.
Like a wise and imaginative teacher, Kristin Hannah imbues past events with relevance and significance ... The story builds to epic proportions over its four distinct parts. The spare writing in the 1921-set first section imparts the starkness of Elsa’s childhood and the barrenness of the landscape, like a Dorothea Lange photograph come alive ... With biting dialogue that holds nothing back, The Four Winds is classic in its artistry. Overtones of America’s present political struggles echo throughout the novel’s events. These indomitable female characters foreshadow the nation’s sweeping change through their fierce commitment to each other and to a common, timeless goal.
... the echoes of Steinbeck’s classic are sometimes so strong that I expected to see the Joads’ Hudson Super Six chugging along the road ... In fact, despite the strong echoes to The Grapes of Wrath, Hannah may be working closer to 19th-century melodrama. The heroines of The Four Winds are purely heroic; its villains wholly evil. Hannah never risks ambiguity; her pages are 100 percent irony-free. And she moves with a relentless pace. Her prose, so ordinary line by line, nevertheless accumulates into scenes that rush from one emergency to the next—starving! beating! flooding!—pausing only for respites of sentimentality ... the snob in me wonders what this indefatigable author could produce if she endured a little tougher editorial criticism and gave herself a little more time. (She’s published 24 novels in 30 years.) But that would mean fiddling with the well-oiled machine that reliably produces such marketable passion. I confess, I spent too long rolling my eyes at the flat style, the shiny characters and the clunky polemics of The Four Winds before finally giving in and snuffling, 'I’m not crying—you’re crying!'
This wide-ranging saga ticks all the boxes for deeply satisfying historical fiction. Elsa is an achingly real character whose sense of self-worth slowly emerges through trying circumstances, and her shifting relationship with her rebellious daughter, Loreda, is particularly moving. Hannah brings the impact of the environmental devastation on the Great Plains down to a personal level with ample period-appropriate details and reactions, showing how people’s love for their land made them reluctant to leave. The storytelling is propulsive, and the contemporary relevance of the novel’s themes—among them, how outsiders are unfairly blamed for economic inequalities—provides additional depth in this rich, rewarding read about family ties, perseverance, and women’s friendships and fortitude.
Hannah...brings Dust Bowl migration to life in this riveting story of love, courage, and sacrifice ... Hannah combines gritty realism with emotionally rich characters and lyrical prose that rings brightly and true from the first line ... In Elsa, a woman who fiercely defends her principles and those she loves, Hannah brilliantly revives the ghost of Tom Joad.
... a saga of almost unrelieved woe ... The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions. For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
