Review by Robert McCool
Kristin Hannah does it again.
I've gone back and read every one of Kristin Hannah's (The Nightingale, The Great Alone) novels, and this new book exhibits the power of her prose that's present that's in all of her writing.
In “The Four Winds” (ISBN 978-1-64358-823-0) the strength of her protagonist is the strength exhibited in all of her female characters. The strength to carry the weight the world, and sometimes that means the whole family, upon her shoulders.
This time her lead is Elsa Martinelli, who is thrust into a world that is hard to survive in without a man willing to work in what are quickly disappearing jobs. Her own husband just walked away from the family farm without so much as a goodbye in the night.
The time is 1934, the place is Texas. The Great Depression grips the country in a deathly grasp with millions out of their jobs, homeless, and hungry. Add the Dust Bowl days to the mix and watch the farmers' crops dry up and die to the endless lack of rain. The situation is dire, and Elsa's hope blows away like the ever present dust, leaving her with a choice to stay and starve, or travel to California for a fresh start her family desperately needs.
“There are jobs in California” people say as they pull up stakes from the farmland that's been repossessed by banks who have no choice in the matter.
So Elsa packs up her two children and takes her truck on the road with little food and her last measure of hope. They arrive in California and find a different life camping in a tent with access to unclean water and little to eat.
Elsa walks miles with holes in the bottom of her shoes looking for relief from the federal or state government. She is given a paltry bag of food and told she has to wait a year to receive state aid. Still, she holds onto the hope her children will be okay in the new order of things.
Then she meets Jack, who is a union activist for the Members of the Worker's Alliance, and her life turns around. She has found a cause she can join and a romance that she never had before.
Elsa fights for the betterment of all her new found friends and her children. They strike, sitting down in the cotton fields that they pick for a living. Things do not go well. The owner of the field retaliates with lower pay for everybody, and people get hurt. Some badly.
Kristin Hannah's atmosphere is as unforgiving as the dust in this latest novel, where sometimes life is too difficult and Elsa works so hard to survive with her children. She spends the whole book saying goodbye to everything she knew from her old life.
I believe this novel is a “must-read.” And after you read this go to “The Great Alone.” Both books show Kristin Hannah's power as a writer of women's strength and character.
