Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - The Four Winds

The Four Winds. I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to share my thoughts on it in a way that would meaningfully inform your decisions to read it. I just started typing this in a text to my book club, and I also figured it was appropriate here.

I was in tears within the first few chapters, and I found myself in spontaneous tears repeatedly. Some of it was the author’s intention, and some of it was how I perceived it through a sense of relating to my own life.

The book opens about 10 years before the Depression and the Dustbowl, and it centers around a young woman (Elsa) who is constantly made to feel and told outright that she is unlovable and even unlikable the way she is by her parents and her sisters. Their highest aspiration for her is to live a quiet life, alone in her parents' home. It centers around how Elsa learns to love herself, how she finds her voice, and how her childhood informs her adult choices.

I HAAATED the way it ended, but it makes sense. It is tragic and has many triggers, but it is beautiful.

I will also mention that I listened to this as an audio book which has commentary from the author as bonus material. I highly recommend it.

Content Warnings

jennaviolet's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

Content Warnings

chloewakham's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is a beautiful tale of a family growing together in the most difficult of circumstances. Elsa's resilience in the face of everything she encounters makes for a moving story.

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slahlum's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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hanpear's review

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adventurous challenging emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

my first kristin hannah book so i didn’t know what to expect. it was a beautiful story, and difficult 95% of the time, very gripping despite how sad & difficult it all was. i don’t think i could’ve pushed through it so quickly if i hadn’t been listening to it.

plot: 3

i could have read a story about any of these characters doing anything and enjoyed it, so the plot itself felt pretty middling. i didn’t know where the story was headed most of the time, it felt slow in parts, others i felt were purely unecessary. and things happened that i didn’t like at all. plus it’s just really depressing.

characters: 5

lovable characters who felt like real people. they were very flawed and often made the same mistakes, and had eventual character growth that felt very convincing and realistic. i especially loved elsa and rose. i appreciated the addition of loretta’s perspective. don’t even get me started on jack!!

world building: 5

it’s historical fiction, the world was pre-built for the author but it was so thoroughly researched. the descriptions of food, the political environment, the different types of lives US Americans were living at the time. if this has been fantasy it would have been very clear as a reader with few gaps.

writing: 4.25 a little cheesy at moments, but overall very strong, the type of descriptive that really sets a scene. i know exactly what i’m looking and what my characters look like and where we are. some things did get repetitive.

overall enjoyment: 4.25

the subject matter brings down the score here, it’s hard to truly enjoy a book about living in seemingly endless poverty. but was i gripped the whole time? did i giggle a bit at certain moments? did i feel for those imaginary people? did i cry? no, but i could have. i loved the themes of family, mother & daughter relationships, coming of age (late in life, too) and overall getting a glimpse into the lives of what could have been real people in my country less than 100 years ago

overall score: 4.3

Content Warnings

astoriareader's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

SYNOPSIS:

It is the 1920s in a small farming community in the Texas Panhandle. Elsa Martinelli grew up in a wealthy family, who never appreciated her & make her feel hard to love. At age 25, she hooks up with Rafe, and she winds up pregnant. They get married, and she moves in with Rafe and his parents, Rosa and Tony, on their farm.
Fast forward, it is 1930s. Along the stock market crash & The Great Depression, there are also several years of drought and The Dust Bowl. Elsa has two kids now, Ant & Lareda, and with no end in sight to the dust storms, Elsa abandon their home and flee to California where they hope work and a better life await. The book details what happens when the family arrives in California.

MY THOUGHTS

As my first read of 2024, I wanted to start off with a book by one of my favorite authors. This marks the fourth book I’ve read by Hannah, with the others being: The Great Alone, The Women, The Nightingale.
Hannah is an expert at character development & writing strong female characters. I always learn something when reading her historical fictions. In this one, I learned a lot that I didn’t know about the Dust Bowl & migrants.
I thoroughly enjoyed the bonds that develop among the characters in the book, and the imagery and vivid descriptions of the surroundings were also very well done.
It is definitely a sweeping story, and it is a hard one to read.
My only complaint about the book is all the characters were white, and I would have enjoyed different perspectives about the experiences of BIPOC folks.
Kudos to Hannah for clearly spending a lot of time researching the era & the topics covered in the book.

TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️historical fiction with strong women as main characters. time period: Dust Bowl.

Content Warnings

sarahfeller's review

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emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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