This was a story of Texas and California during the Great Depression. It was a very sad story with a strong political statement. Debatable!

Omg I just finished reading this book and wow what a fantastic read.It is a story of hardship but told with so much love and hope.The lead character was a lady and what a lady.I always love Kirstins books but I think this might be my favourite.

Ok so this was a DNF from me. Not a decision I took lightly. But holy crap, the world has been in a pandemic for a hard and difficult 18 months now, and I just couldn't take another minute more of this bleak, desolate and totally depressing book.

Granted, it was interesting reading about the time period around the Great Depression, the dust bowl, and how people survived, a period of history I know very little about. However, there was no letup in the misery and, maybe thats the point?

I felt, personally, that I wanted characters to cheer for but at 62% found that I literally didn't care what happened to the characters from thereon in, so stopped reading it. I know the majority loved this book but it wasn't for me personally. 2 stars for what I've read so far.

Kristin Hannah never fails to make me cry like a baby. This is a beautiful story about the bond between mother and daughter and also a history lesson about one of the darkest times in America. Thank you for the ARC.

Kristin Hannah has produced another wonderful page Turner with this book I cannot recommend it highly enough

*3.5 stars*
At times, I found this book hard to put down. The descriptions of life during the Great Depression in Texas and the Dust Bowl were chilling, especially as its a period in history I know little about. Unfortunately, I found the characters fell flat. I did not connect to Elsa and kept hoping for a spark to draw me in but I was disappointed. Despite this, The Four Winds is a good read although it can be hard-going through so much tragedy.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book was a good read but was slightly too long.
It was well written especially the descriptions of the landscape and there was good characterisation.
This book dealt with a period of history that I wasn’t very familiar with.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it but I felt the middle third wasn’t as strong and bored me at times.

Sigh, I am so disappointed. I wanted to love this book, I really did. I just found it taking so long to read and I never felt an emotional pull to pick it back up.

I am definitely in the minority here and I was going through a little slump at the time. so having read the reviews I may pick it up again.

Love the cover though!

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan, and the author Kristin Hannah.
I do enjoy Kristin Hannah's writing, and also enjoyed the Nightingale. The fundamentals of the story and the characters are solid (if simplistic), but there's always something missing. In this case, important scenes felt rushed and thrown together to move the story forwards, and there were some very trite, almost cheesy moments.
More than anything else, the despair and misery of the book was exhausting, and incredibly hard work. Hannah perfectly illustrates the hopelessness and desolation of the Great Depression, but it was very hard going.
For that reason, 3 stars.

I’ve now read three of Hannah’s books and I’m obsessed with the way she is able to create such a vivid picture of the location and the characters. Whilst I was reading the book I could feel the dust in my lungs and the heat suffocating me.

Elsa and her family are struggling to maintain their livelihood living on a farm during the Dust Bowl era and she has to make the brave decision to take her family to California and try and start a new life there. I don’t want to say anything else or it’ll ruin the story!!

This is a book about strong females which I always LOVE. Elsa has so much growth has a women, she starts off timid but brace and by the end of the novel she is courageous and brave. I also loved the maternal side of this story, Elsa’s relationship with her children and her in laws is so beautiful and touching to read, I felt attached to all of them.

I actually think I preferred the first half of this novel when they were living on the farm than I did the latter half when they were living in California but either way this novel was beautiful!

Discrimination plays a central part in this novel and I think Hannah did a great job of writing about it. Elsa and her family are refused jobs and housing because they’ve come from a different part of America. Because they talk different and are wearing dirty clothes due to so many days of travelling people are quick to judge. Hannah also highlighted how hard it is to get out of poverty and that it’s not easy like people claim it is.

Being a huge fan of historical novels this one did not disappoint. Kristin Hannah for me is an amazing author and i am yet to read a book by her i have not enjoyed. From reading this book i learned quite a bit about US history and the struggles they faced in the 1930s, although it is fiction i bet it is not far away from how it truly was.

I loved this book so much. Hannah does such an amazing job of creating a setting and a set of characters that you cannot help but love, root for and weep over. Though obviously not purposefully, this ended up having such relevance to the post-pandemic world we see slowly building up around us. Beautifully, beautifully written, I cannot recommend this enough.

It took me a while to get into this book , and what a long book it is! I'm so glad I stuck with it though as it's such a powerful moving story. The story follows Elsa and her two children as they move across America during the great depression. It really is unbelievably sad what families in those times went through. I've heard alot about Kristin Hannah but this is the first of hers I have read and I will definitely be looking up more of hers.

Based on the Great Depression of 1929, which originated in America, this is a heart-wrenching tale of Matinelli Family and thousands of farming families like them, who faced severe hardships for several years due to drought and harsh storms.

Elsa Martinelli is a young woman who was always neglected and not loved as a child by her parents or siblings. She grows up to be a determined woman and carves a life for herself with her not-so-loving husband, immensely caring In-laws and two beautiful children, all to be shattered piece-by-piece by the Great Depression.

The Four Winds is a tear-jerking tale of Elsa's struggle throughout the years of drought and strong dust storms. The story also encompasses the Black Sunday known for horrendous black storm which is a part of the Dust Bowl in the USA. It's a tale of hardships faced by people during those tough times, of their courage and determination to make a living for themselves and their families.

The story is written so beautifully that you can live every moment of Elsa's life through the author's words. One can feel the pain and difficulties people must have faced during those harsh times. The rage of the nature, unfortunate life events, unfairness of government and those in authority will simply shake your heart to the core.

The everyday toil of the families to make ends meet and bring little food on table saddened me so much that it made me cry my heart out. The little joys they would find living in those dirty and unhygienic camps made me count my blessings.

I know my words cannot justify how beautifully this book has been woven around such an important event in world history. Even if you do not enjoy reading Historical Fiction, this book is not to be missed !!

Wow! This book reads like a new American classic, as historical fiction writer Kristin Hannah takes us back to 1934 and the difficulties of farming the land in a depression. This was very reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath, a book I found deeply moving when I first read it. I have grown up in a farming county in the U.K. and I understand that deep connection to the land, I had a lot of background information on the Dust Bowl and the terrible hardships suffered by people farming on the Great Plains. I did American Literature at university so having the background really helped with understanding the characters in the book,
Elsa is one of the strongest characters I have encountered in fiction, simply because she starts from a difficult situation and every time she encounters hardship we keeps going. A lot of people would be broken by just one of Elsa’s experiences, but she weathers it. As a young girl she is very downtrodden, feeling ugly and unworthy of love, especially when she compares herself to her sisters. Her parents are rich and her sisters are pretty and Elsa feels less than them. Then one day she decides to break out from reading romance novels in her room, and in a homemade flapper dress she goes out looking for the real thing. Having been turned away from a club, she bumps into a stranger and they have sex. The stranger is Rafe and he’s from a farming family. When Elsa finds out she is pregnant, her family abandons her at Rafe’s family farm.
I did feel for Elsa because she’s one of those characters life seems to happen to, rather than her being in control of her destiny. It takes several children later for her to finally make her own decisions. When Rafe walks out on them and she is abandoned again, Elsa decides to gather her family and go to California where there is work and more opportunity.
The plot was completely absorbing, and I felt every bit of the setting. The endless dust, the grime of constant travelling and the heat. I really sensed the feelings of these migrants as they made their way to the promised land of California only to find the treatment they received as they got there was harsh. There are lessons in this for our present times and how we welcome those who come here desperate for help or better lives for their families. Elsa’s resilience is incredible and I just as with other books set around this time, there were times when I was moved by their plight. This is a historical fiction writer at the top of her game.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley and all opinions are my own.
This book was an intense and complex story that really evoked the time, bringing it to life. The writing is very well done. I thoroughly enjoyed escaping into this book and I liked that the author chose an unexpected theme to convey. It also gave a voice to those who haven't previously had their stories told. I liked the gritty realism of this story and how the author didn't shy away from difficult moments.
This is a great read and I thoroughly recommend it to any fans of historical fiction.

I did enjoy reading The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah but for me, this book was a bit of a slog (hard work to read) The topic of this book, poverty in America during the great depression and the people stuck in a never ending cycle of debt and poverty was just really depressing and really hard work to read about.

The character development was good, but for some treason I just did not resonate with the main characters and as I was reading every twist and turn, I just felt quite indifferent to their plight. Every single twist dragged them further down (and me too) and had me feeling despondent about reading further.

I know that's the whole premise of the story, I guess I am not the best suited reader for such a depressing story.

How have I not come across this author before? I was glued to this book from the moment I started it, Elsa I found to be a compelling character who had so much love to give yet had to wait many years before she found people who would reciprocate it. Her story, of privilege without love, of finding love in a harsh climate and of surviving hardships in 1930s America is one that I won't forget. It's a tear jerker and yet it's also uplifting and I highly recommend it.

Another epic read by Kristin Hannah set in Texas and California during one of the most challenging times for American farmers. This was a slow burner for me but I was fully invested by the second half of the book, a testament to strong women and the power of love for your children. The experiences of the Martinelli family came vividly to life as they battled the challenges life threw at them. Definitely one to read if you enjoy historical fiction. Many thanks to Netgalley and Pan MacMillan for this advanced readers copy.

Memorable quote: "There was something she hadn't known when she went into marriage and became a mother that she knew now: it was only possible to live without love when you'd never known it."

What can I say about this great author that hasn't already been said. Let's be honest, she's a master of her craft. Yes, I can wax lyrical about her excellent ability to create memorable and realistic characters, her superb use of dialogue that's not only very believable, but that also brings her characters to life, her amazing ability to set the scene in such a way that you feel you are there experiencing exactly what the characters are experiencing, and her uncanny ability to make us all cry! Yes, like I say, Kristin Hannah is a genuine and natural storyteller,

This book is another hit in my opinion because of all of the above. If I have any criticism at all it might be that I found the pacing to be ever so slightly off. There were some parts of the story that seemed to drag just ever so slightly, and then action-packed and emotional scenes at the end of the book seemed too easily and quickly dealt with. But it's a small criticism. Overall, I loved this story, perhaps not quite as much as The Nightingale and The Great Alone, but not too far behind. Perhaps I didn't fall in love quite as much with this one because this was such a depressing and sad tale and I battled to find anything hopeful in it (even though the ending does give a glimmer of hope), and perhaps the constantly desolate setting of the Great Depression was indeed just too depressing for me. But that said, it's a great story and it deserves to be read! I highly recommend it.