A number of reviewing sources have called The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah “the most anticipated new book of 2021.” If you are like me and read The Nightingale and The Great Alone, you might have it on your list as well. I read the book in an advance reading copy furnished by Net Galley before it goes on sale February 2.
Elsa Wolcott grows up in a home with material wealth and emotional dearth. She has aged into what appears to be “old maid” status in 1921 Texas when marriage was the only accepted option for women. After she acts in desperation and ruins her reputation, she takes her only option and marries the younger Rafe Martinelli who helped her ruin it. She hardly knows him, but she learns to love the land and her farming Italian in-laws who are shunned by the community elite. Trouble comes with the extended drought that parches the land and devastates plants, animals, and people. Elsa is torn as she weighs the options of leaving the farm she has come to love against the rosy reports of California jobs and breathable air for her children.
Kristin Hannah, in her usual fashion, takes you to her setting and makes it real. You feel sand in your throat as dust storms whip across the Great Plains and sticky barbs of cotton bolls as you try to pick enough to survive after fleeing to California for the broken promise of a better life.
The Four Winds is worth the read for the story and the empathetic effects of the Dust Bowl followed by the Great Depression. I would add this caveat. There is a good possibility that reading it may either leave you depressed or may make you realize there have been times when life was even worse with no more end in sight than the one we are now living with Covid.