THE FOUR WINDS

by Kristin Hannah

I am generally a Kristin Hannah fan:  I loved The Nightingale and The Great Alone.  But she missed the mark with The Four Winds.  In the book, Hannah tells the story of Elsa Wolcott, an unloved, unattractive, aging young woman forced to marry a man she hardly knows to legitimize the baby they’d unwittingly conceived.  Disinherited by her own family, Elsa moves onto a farm with her husband’s family. And so begins the story of surviving the Depression and dustbowl of the 1930s on the Texas panhandle.

I believe Hannah’s story has promise, but the execution is sloppy.  Some of Hannah’s descriptions of Elsa’s struggle to survive go on for way too long and could use some judicious editing.  Some scenes directly contradict other scenes.  For me, the end result was a general sense of frustration.  The Four Winds could have been so much better had more care been taken in its revision process.  Could this problem be a direct result of how the writing, editing and publishing processes have struggled to adapt during the pandemic?  Perhaps.  But whatever the reason, The Four Winds was not my cup of tea. (Liz)

P.S.  For a much better researched and executed (non-fiction) book about the dust bowl, I recommend The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.