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Summary
Summary
"The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."--Publishers Weekly
From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.
" My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family ."
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.
The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it--the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hannah (The Great Alone) brings Dust Bowl migration to life in this riveting story of love, courage, and sacrifice. In 1934 Texas, after four years of drought, the Martinelli farm is no longer thriving, but Elsa is attached to the land and her in-laws, and she works tirelessly and cares for her children, 12-year-old Loreda and seven-year-old Anthony. Her husband, Rafe, has become distant and something of a hard drinker, and after he abandons them, Elsa reluctantly leaves with her children for California with the promise of steady work. Her dreams of a better future are interrupted by the discrimination they face in the unwelcoming town of Welty, where they are forced to live in a migrant camp and work for extremely low wages picking cotton. When Elsa's meager wages are further reduced and she has the opportunity to join striking workers, she must decide whether to face the dangers of standing up for herself and her fellow workers. Hannah combines gritty realism with emotionally rich characters and lyrical prose that rings brightly and true from the first line ("Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love"). In Elsa, a woman who fiercely defends her principles and those she loves, Hannah brilliantly revives the ghost of Tom Joad. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family. "Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going." We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive--"too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself"--Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. 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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
With this emotionally charged epic of Dust Bowl-era Texas and its dramatic aftermath, the prolific Hannah has added another outstanding novel to her popular repertoire. In 1921, Elsa Wolcott is a tall, bookish woman of 25 whose soul is stifled by her superficial parents. By 1934, after marrying Rafe Martinelli, a young Italian Catholic who was the first man to show her affection, Elsa is a mother of two who has found a home on her beloved in-laws' farm. Severe drought and terrible dust storms affect everyone in this proud family, and they are all forced to make tough choices. 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hannah is a consistent best-seller, and this sharply relevant tale of a past catastrophic time will exert a particularly strong magnetic force.
Library Journal Review
The first time Elsa Wolcott Martinelli shows her mettle in desperate circumstances is in 1921, when she is disowned by her wealthy family for thwarting their intentions for her lifelong spinsterhood. By the 1930s, Elsa embraces her life as indefatigable farm wife; bolstered by her immigrant in-laws' affection, she becomes a partner in their effort to keep their Texas Panhandle farm. Driven by combined Dust Bowl scourges--economic depression, drought, and siege-like windstorms--to rescue her children from dust pneumonia and starvation, Elsa flees with them to California. There, amid fierce competition for fruit- and cotton-picking jobs, a new, more insidious peril awaits: now re-cast as migrants and "Okies," they and thousands of other displaced persons represent fair game for employers, officials, and resentful residents to cheat and exploit as disposable labor commodities. Narrator Julia Whelan convincingly portrays Elsa's coming of age from sheltered recluse to workers' rights champion. Indelible Dust Bowl horrors (centipedes streaming from walls, cotton pickers surveilled by gun towers) are appropriately pitched, so readers experience rather than simply hear them. VERDICT With poignant prose documenting historical scenarios but also invoking currently resonant issues--environmental responsibility, immigration and displacement, workers' and women's rights, social ills laid bare by calamity--Hannah's (The Great Alone) absorbing tale will enthrall a wide swath of readers.--Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX