nyt book review four winds

Review: Kristin Hannah's 'The Four Winds' is a 'stirring' tale of love and hardship in Dust Bowl-era America

Corrections & clarifications: A previous version of this story misidentified a 2018 film titled “The Nightingale.” The adaptation of Kristin Hannah's book of the same name has not yet been released.

As the Dust Bowl ravages Texas, one woman must make a choice: Leave the farm that has been her family’s livelihood or stay and risk succumbing to cyclones of dirt.

Kristin Hannah ’s absorbing new novel begins just a few years before, when it seemed as if Elsa Wolcott might finally have a peaceful, fulfilling life ahead. After a rough childhood with parents who didn’t love her, she met Rafe Martinelli, the soulful and handsome son of Italian immigrants. Unlike any other person in her life, he made her feel valued. She moved in with his family, and together they made a healthy living, raising two children while they worked the earth.

There are greater forces in the world than love and dedication, however. "The Four Winds" (St. Martin’s Press, 464 pp., *** ½ out of four stars) plays out against the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that together gutted the American economy and turned beloved farms into ruins. As the Texas panhandle parches out, Elsa watches their crops wither and has to send her children scrambling through the dirt to find any scrap potatoes that might remain in the fields. Meanwhile, her parents-in-law sweep and sweep, trying to rid the house of ever-accumulating dust. Hannah’s writing is at its strongest when she takes us into the vivid hardships of the drought, as overuse of the land results in storms of topsoil that flay skin from muscle and fill the bellies of staggered cattle with dirt.

5 books not to miss: Kristin Hannah’s ‘The Four Winds,’ 'Mike Nichols: A Life'

Elsa is resilient, and readers will be drawn to her devotion to her children and her tireless efforts to keep her family well, efforts that bring her to pack them up and head west. On the journey she has to contend not just with the hardships of picking cotton for pitiful wages, but with the weaker wills of the men around her, who abandon family or run ruthless corporate farms that exploit their employees. Along the way, Elsa develops a greater consciousness of the plight of laborers in Depression-era America, joining them in protests against the larger political and economic engines that exploit people and land alike, leading to the Dust Bowl in the first place.

"The Four Winds" is epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love that is likely to lead to a film adaptation (Hannah’s previous best-selling novel, "The Nightingale," is getting a film adaptation later this year starring Dakota and Elle Fanning). At times this book feels a little too ready for Hollywood. While most of Hannah’s writing is specific and surprising, the novel’s beating heart weakens a little in the last section as it falls into familiar crowd-pleaser story beats, with a simplified villain and a quick epiphany just in time to give a rousing speech. But these ninth inning fumbles do little to diminish the overall power of this majestic and absorbing story that turns attention to the unsung women of the Dust Bowl, who “worked from sunup to sundown, too, toiled on wheat farms until we were as dry and baked as the land we loved.”

Review: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is an impactful and epic story set during the Dust Bowl era.

I’ve been looking forward to The Four Winds for quite some time! I knew this would be a big hit for 2021 and that’s why I included it in my huge must-read book club picks for 2021 list. This is the exact kind of novel that is perfect for book clubs. A historical fiction story that is completely relevant to our current situation with the pandemic and also climate change. It’s eerie how history does tend to repeat itself in various ways.

And of course, Kristin Hannah is one of the best writers out there. So you also get a sweeping story that is quite emotional. I’m fairly certain every Kristin Hannah story has made me cry at the end and it was no different with The Four Winds . I’m talking full on tears at the end! I still believe The Nightingale is her best work to date but The Four Winds is very close. I can’t recommend this one enough.

The Synopsis

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.

We read the story from the perspectives of Elsa and her teenage daughter, Loreda. The story starts off with Elsa feeling very isolated at her family home. A heart condition has crippled her parents’ perspective of her so that they don’t believe she’ll accomplish anything nor will anyone want to marry her. Her parents are so cruel—it’s quite shocking.

When the charming and naive Rafe shows an interest in Elsa, everything changes from that point forward. She gets pregnant (with Loreda) and Rafe is forced to give up his parents dream of him going to college, while Elsa is banished from her home forever. She moves to the Martinelli farm and is eventually embraced as one of their own by Rafe’s parents.

While the marriage is far from a dream, Elsa finds her place at the farm. And when times are good, it’s great. But then, it all changes when the drought invades the precious land. Everyone is then forced to make decisions that will have life alternating impacts.

I liked Elsa quite a bit and I really felt for her so many times in her journey. All she wants is love and to be loved in return. But she doesn’t get that from her husband and when Loreda becomes a teenager, she resents everything her mom represents. But through all the hardships, Elsa’s strength and resilience throughout the story is inspiring and impactful.

So I just finished Firefly Lane (also by Kristin Hannah) a couple weeks before reading this story and that also featured a complicated mother/daughter relationship. Despite being different stories, it shows that the mother/daughter relationships are unique and difficult at times.

Loreda, unlike her mother, is a dreamer. She believes there’s so much more out there than the farm life and feels suffocated. I do think the reader can feel both frustrated with how Loreda treats her mother but also understanding of how she feels so trapped. The devastation of the land really forces Loreda to grow up quite a bit. Her character development is very strong and she finds her voice in more ways than one.

History Component

If you’ve visited Book Club Chat in the past, you know that I’m a big fan of historical fiction. And it really boils down to this reason: you’ll learn something new about either a historical figure or a moment in history. We all know about the Dust Bowl and many of us had to read The Grapes of Wrath in high school. But I really learned quite a bit from reading The Four Winds —more so than in my Oklahoma history class in high school (I grew in Oklahoma)! I had no idea about the manmade problem that helped contribute to the devastation, which is something that can be witnessed today with the impacts of climate change.

It’s also interesting, and bizarre, to read about how “okies” was such a slang word used to represent anyone fleeing the broken farms for a better life in California. These people had nothing to their name and it seemed many CA locals didn’t let them forget it. It’s quite heart wrenching to read the cruelty towards poverty, but there are some kind people who make an appearance too.

I loved this story. It had everything I want in a historical fiction novel. It’s impactful, devastating, but also full of heart. If you’re reading this with your book club, check out my book club questions here .

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Kristin Hannah’s “The Four Winds” Braves Dust Bowl in Sweeping Family Saga

The Four Winds

“epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love … majestic and absorbing.” — usa today, “a timely novel highlighting the worth and delicate nature of nature itself.” — delia owens, author of  where the crawdads sing.

The Four Winds ( St. Martin’s ) by Kristin Hannah is a sweeping saga of a family’s struggle to survive set against the backdrop of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of America’s Plains states. At the heart of the story is Elsa Wolcott, a tall, awkward girl who suffered rheumatic fever as a teenager. She believed she was never beautiful, smart or strong enough to earn the love of her wealthy Texan family, so she withdrew into the world of books. 

At 25 years of age, Elsa boldly cuts her long hair, purchases a bolt of red silk at the General Store and fashions it into a slinky dress. The year is 1921, and she’s unaware that her rebellious acts would change her life. The little red dress leads to an illicit love affair, being disowned by her family, and a shotgun wedding to Rafe Martinelli, the shiftless son of immigrant wheat farmers.

Years of drought ravage the Martinellis’ farm, leaving Elsa, Rafe, their children, Loreda and Anthony, and Rafe’s parents near the point of starvation. When Rafe abandons them, and the storms grow deadly, Elsa and her children must decide whether to stay and fight for the land they love or leave. But after Anthony contracts dust pneumonia, they face one heartbreaking truth — they must leave to save him.

They embark on a dangerous journey to California in search of “milk and honey,” fresh air and a new life. Unfortunately, they become part of the millions desperately escaping the Depression and the Dust Bowl who live hand-to-mouth, pick crops, receive government relief, and are the objects of prejudice and violence in the San Joaquin Valley. 

HANNAH’S MASTERFUL PORTRAIT OF AMERICAN RESILIENCE

Hannah is a master at capturing the essence of historical events and developing strong women protagonists who live and breathe in that time period. In The Nightingale , Hannah transported us to war-torn France during WWII, where she examined the complex relationship between two sisters with opposing political ideologies. The Four Winds is a story about the delicate dynamics of a mother/daughter relationship burdened by abandonment, poverty, and political and ecological tragedies.

As in The Nightingale , one woman seeks to be an agent of change while fear paralyzes the other into complacency. They fight as mother and daughter do, but Elsa and Loreda draw strength from each other to face the dust storms, the filthy migrant camp, starvation and life as downtrodden migrant workers. Together, they embark on a poignant quest of survival and hope in a time and place of death, destruction and prejudice. As Loreda matures, she realizes that one person can change the world. She comes to view her mother as a warrior, willing to protect her family, her friends and her ideals at any cost. Meanwhile, Elsa discovers that motherhood has made her braver than she ever dreamed possible. Both women realize that their love matters most.

FEELING PRESENT TIES TO HISTORIC ECONOMIC STRIFE

One cannot read The Four Winds without making connections to the current pandemic and economic downturn. In her novel, Hannah paints a depressing picture of hopelessness in the breadlines, government relief, abandoned businesses, foreclosures and forces beyond any one person’s control — and the helplessness Elsa and her family feel with the loss of control over their fates and the American Dream. They once experienced financial comfort and never imagined being forced to subsist on government subsidies to survive. 

Today, we face identical issues — food banks, unemployment greater than during the Depression, evictions, political unrest and isolation. Like Elsa, former gainfully employed people who’ve never requested government help must rely on it for their family’s survival. Just as Hannah’s characters hide from the dust storms destroying their farms, we’re hiding from an invisible microorganism inhabiting the air we breathe. In the 1930s, crop rotation, irrigation and science restored the farmland, and “The New Deal” restored the economy. We are fortunate to live in a century when science and technology can eradicate a global pandemic … and soon, we hope.

The Four Winds is about a country in crisis, and how one woman thrives amidst the chaos. There are lessons to be learned from history, and Elsa’s bravery in The Four Winds inspires us to draw strength and learn from the past. We will survive these dark days and we will ultimately succeed if we work together.

Buy this Book!

Jodé Millman

Jodé Millman is the author of the “Queen City Crimes” Series, novels inspired by true crimes in the Hudson Valley. She has been the recipient of the Independent Press, American Fiction, and Independent Publisher Bronze IPPY Awards, and was a Finalist for the Romance Writers of America Daphne DuMaurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, the Clue, and the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. She’s an attorney, the host/producer of  The Backstage with the Bardavon  podcast, and the creator of The Writer’s Law School.

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Review: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression. Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. 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.

Today is the Presidents Day Holiday in the U.S., so I went looking through the virtually towering TBR pile for something with an Americana theme. Which led me straight to The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. While the Great Depression happened everywhere, the Dust Bowl feels like a distinctly American bit of history. At least this particular telling of it certainly is. Just as the topsoil of Texas and the Great Plains States blew east as far as Washington D.C., many of the people living in the former – and future – breadbasket of America blew west to California.

Like many of the people who went west, in that or any other era of American history, these former farmers – and doctors, lawyers, bankers and businessmen – and their families went west to make a better life for their families. Or at least a life where the very land that once sustained them wasn’t killing them with every breath.

The story, this era of devastation and loss, is seen through two women, Elsa (Elsinore) Wolcott Martinelli and her daughter Loreda. The story begins with Elsa, over-protected and under-loved, a 25-year-old woman who sees the life her upper-class parents have mapped out for her and wants none of it.

Elsa is no beauty, and she was diagnosed with a heart condition in her early teens. Her parents expect her to live the life of an invalid, doomed to spinsterhood and expected to sit quietly and self-effacingly in a corner, waiting until her parents become elderly and need her to take care of them.

Elsa wants a life for herself. One evening she goes out in secret and meets a man who is just as lonely and feels just as trapped as she does. In stolen moments together, she discovers love while he honestly just finds a temporary escape.

At least until the child they make changes all of their plans. And the dry years and the dust take away everything they ever dreamed of. It’s left up to Elsa to take her children somewhere that they might have a chance.

Or at least somewhere that the land itself won’t kill them – although there will be plenty of other things and people that just might do the same.

Escape Rating A- : I’m having a bit of a mixed feelings reaction to this book and in an unusual way. Those mixed feelings are because I recognize that this book is really, really good, while at the same time feeling like it’s not for me.

And I’m thinking that’s because for historical fiction, which it very much is, The Four Winds definitely borders on Literary Fiction which is generally not my jam. So I’m torn.

The alternative explanation is that the historical parts really drew me in, but the character of Elsa didn’t. On the one hand, she’s an indomitable spirit, surviving in a situation that would bring anyone to their knees – as it certainly does Elsa.

The difference is that Elsa doesn’t so much rise up until the very end as she puts her head down and keeps on keeping on for the sake of her children Loreda and Anthony. But she doesn’t so much exhibit courage or selflessness as she does a lack of self. She’s been beaten down her whole life and now she beats herself down whenever her situation isn’t doing a hard enough job at it.

I think that is where the story verges on Literary Fiction as she’s downtrodden internally even before she’s trodden down externally.

But the history wrapped into this is intensely compelling. It’s as though the author reached into the Dust Bowl Migration photographs by Dorothea Lange and just pulled out all of the emotion and backstory and poured it onto the page. If you’re not seeing the iconic image of the woman with her children as you’re reading this you need to take a good, hard look at Lange’s work because the images are still absolutely soul-searing 80-plus years later.

And those scorching is on every page of The Four Winds . Not just the despair of the land and the life blowing away – and into everyone’s lungs – in Texas, but the hate and derision on the face of so many Californians when they arrive. The inhumane treatment that Elsa and her children – and all of the other migrant workers – receive in California echoes through the years right up to the present and the way that immigrants are spoken about, written about and treated to this very day.

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Book Review: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

St. martin press (february 2, 2021), mothers & children fiction/historical fiction/women’s domestic life fiction.

#1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER #1  USA TODAY  BESTSELLER #1  WALL STREET JOURNAL  BESTSELLER #1 INDIE BESTSELLER

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.

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“Love is what remains when everything else is gone.”

A wonderful, epic novel about a woman and her children that head to California in search for a better life. This is set during the Great Depression where millions lost their jobs and homes. It’s a story of survival, sacrifice, courage, love, hope, and finding ones worth. This story brought home the horrors of the Dust Bowl and The Great Depression. I read about it in school but The Four Winds made it real. The story grabbed me and kept until the final page. I’m starting to fall in love with period pieces and this one I devoured. A heartbreaking, powerful book.

Reviewed by Comfy Chair Books/Lisa Reigel (March 19, 2021)

March book read for the Brenda Novak Book Club

Signed Hardcover Book included in the Brenda Novak Book Box subscription

“ The Four Winds  seems eerily prescient in 2021 . . . Its message is galvanizing and hopeful: We are a nation of scrappy survivors. We’ve been in dire straits before; we will be again. Hold your people close.”― The New York Times

“A spectacular tour de force that shines a spotlight on the indispensable but often overlooked role of Greatest Generation women.” ―People “Through one woman’s survival during the harsh and haunting Dust Bowl, master storyteller, Kristin Hannah, reminds us that the human heart and our Earth are as tough, yet as fragile, as a change in the wind.”  ― Delia Owens, author of  Where the Crawdads Sing

Above all else,  The Four Winds  is merely a really good story, one that hits you in all the right places and will keep surprising you until the end.”― Associated Press

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Her novel,  The Nightingale,  has been published in 43 languages and is currently in movie production at TriStar Pictures, which also optioned her novel,  The Great Alone . Her novel,  Home Front  has been optioned for film by 1492 Films (produced the Oscar-nominated  The Help ) with Chris Columbus attached to direct.

Kristin is a former-lawyer-turned writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Her novel,  Firefly Lane , became a runaway bestseller in 2009, a touchstone novel that brought women together, and  The Nightingale , in 2015 was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, iTunes,  Library Journal ,  Paste ,  The   Wall Street Journal  and  The Week .  Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards. The audiobook of  The Nightingale  won the Audiobook of the Year Award in the fiction category.

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The Four Winds

Description.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression.

Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. 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.

Book Review: 'The Four Winds' Is Classic Kristin Hannah—So Grab The Tissues

About three years ago, author Kristin Hannah began writing a novel about hard times in America—the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, economic collapse, massive unemployment and income inequality.

“Never in my wildest dreams,” Hannah writes in the author’s note of her new novel, “did I imagine that the Great Depression would become so relevant in our modern lives.”

Hannah’s newest book, The Four Winds , is a story about love, courage, tenacity and hope, told through the eyes of a woman who escapes the misery of the Dust Bowl only to experience the anguish of the Great Depression. Like many of Hannah’s previous characters, Elsa Wolcott is a strong woman who doesn’t recognize her own power—at least not at first.

For Elsa, heartache was “the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn’t see.”

Abandoned by a husband she loved but never really knew, Elsa’s search for a better life for her children drives them west to California, where they live in Hooverville shanty towns and follow the harvest for meager pay. The bigotry they face as outcast “Okies”—struggling to secure food, housing and a living wage—sounds all too familiar, as immigrants experience the same attitudes and challenges today. By the time Elsa and her teen-aged daughter are caught up in the Workers Alliance strikes of the late 1930s, you understand their desolation and cheer their efforts.

Amid the relentless strife, Hannah somehow manages to pepper her novel with mother-daughter angst, female friendship and even romance—all of it culminating with an unforgettable ending. Fans of The Nightingale  won’t be disappointed with the author’s newest work, and they’ll warn you—if you don’t know already—to keep the tissues handy.

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Book summary and reviews of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

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The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

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Book summary.

From Kristin Hannah, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone , comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America's most defining eras - the Great Depression.

Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli―like so many of her neighbors―must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. 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.

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Reader reviews.

"[A] riveting story of love, courage, and sacrifice...Hannah combines gritty realism with emotionally rich characters and lyrical prose that rings brightly and true...In Elsa, a woman who fiercely defends her principles and those she loves, Hannah brilliantly revives the ghost of Tom Joad." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Outstanding...[A] rich, rewarding read about family ties, perseverance, and women's friendships and fortitude." - Booklist (starred review) "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." - Kirkus Reviews "Through one woman's survival during the harsh and haunting Dust Bowl, master storyteller, Kristin Hannah, reminds us that the human heart and our Earth are as tough, yet as fragile, as a change in the wind. This mother's soul, suffering the same drought as the land, attempts to cross deserts and beat starvation to save her children with a fierce inner strength called motherhood. A timely novel highlighting the worth and delicate nature of Nature itself." - Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing

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Kristin Hannah Author Biography

Photo: Charles Bush

Kristin Hannah is an award-winning international number one bestselling author with over 25 million copies of her books sold worldwide. Her most recent titles, The Four Winds, The Nightingale and The Great Alone won numerous best fiction awards and her earlier novel, Firefly Lane , is currently a bestselling series on Netflix. Kristin is a lawyer-turned-writer and is the mother of one son. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle.

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Awards & Accolades

New York Times Bestseller

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THE FOUR WINDS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2021

For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.

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.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2

Page Count: 464

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Kristin Hannah

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SEEN & HEARD

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE GOD OF THE WOODS

by Liz Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2024

"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.

Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.

One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in  Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.

Pub Date: July 2, 2024

ISBN: 9780593418918

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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by Liz Moore

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Your current subscription allows you to be actively logged in on up to three (3) devices simultaneously. click on continue below to log out of other sessions and log in on this device., 'the four winds' and 'four hundred souls' top bestsellers lists | book pulse.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah debuts at No. 1 on the  NYT fiction bestsellers list and the  USA Today  list, while Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain tops the NYT  nonfiction list and is at No. 8 on the USA Today list. The finalists for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards are out, with winners to be announced April 8. The Story Prize Spotlight Award, honoring an exceptional short story collection, goes to Inheritors by Asako Serizawa. There is adaptation news about the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna, and more. Plus, lots of buzz about  Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins.

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Awards News

The finalists for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards are out . Winners will be announced April 8.

The 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize shortlist is out . The winner will be announced March 24. 

The Story Prize Spotlight Award, honoring an exceptional short story collection , goes to Inheritors by Asako Serizawa (Doubleday).

The Novel Prize, "a biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English," goes to Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au .

The Manhattan Institute announces the finalists for its 17th annual Hayek Book Prize , which honors a book that reflect philosopher and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek's "vision of economic and individual liberty."

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers | USA Today Best-Selling Books

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's: Macmillan; LJ starred review) blows in at No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Survivors by Jane Harper (Flatiron: Macmillan) lands at No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (Pamela Dorman: Penguin) starts at No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 13 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Send for Me by Lauren Fox (Knopf: Random House) arrives at No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Girl A by Abigail Dean (Viking: Penguin) is No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine: Random House) slides in at No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 5 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Still Standing by Kristen Ashley (Kristen Ashley Rock Chick) stands at No. 9 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (One World: Random House; LJ starred review) is No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 8 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant (Viking: Penguin; LJ starred review) is No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 4 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy by Andy Ngo (Center Street: Hachette) is No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and No. 10 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

When Harry Met Minnie: A True Story of Love and Friendship by Martha Teichner (Celadon: Macmillan) is No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris (Penguin; LJ starred review) is No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Like Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are by Jedidiah Jenkins (Convergent: Random House; LJ starred review) is No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

At the NYT , Mary Roach reviews This Is the Voice by John Colapinto (S. & S.): "...where is the 300-page book devoted to the larynx? It has arrived, and it is exemplary ." Also reviewed, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert (Crown: Random House; LJ starred review): " Her narrative voice is steady and restrained — the better, it sometimes seems, to allow an unadorned reality to show through, its contours unimpeded by frantic alarmism or baroque turns of phrase."

NPR reviews Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Little, Brown: Hachette): "'Gay Bar' combines memoir, history and criticism; it's a difficult book to pin down, but that's what makes it so readable and so endlessly fascinating ." Also, Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins (Avon: HarperCollins; LJ starred review): " 'Wild Rain' will linger in your thoughts for its remarkably likable hero, spirited heroine, beautiful horses, scenery, adventure, and romance ."

Book Marks picks “ 5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week .”

Briefly Noted

Tor.com lists 6 great Africanfuturist sci-fi books .

The Millions highlights the best poetry of the month .

O: The Oprah Magazine 's February list highlights beach reads .

Shondaland picks " The 5 Best Rom-Com Novels for Valentine’s Day ."

Shelf Awareness previews new books out next week .

R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, Kink: Stories (S. & S.), share a reading list of " Artists Who Inspire Them " at Lit Hub .

Two new children's books are coming from high-profile authors: Pinkie Promises by Senator Elizabeth Warren (Henry Holt: Macmillan) and The Legend of the Christmas Witch by Aubrey Plaza (Viking: Penguin) . USA Today has details.

Entertainment Weekly has an excerpt from World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (Ecco: HarperCollins), which is due out March 24.

Tor.com  excerpts   We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart (Tordotcom: Macmillan). It's due out March 9.

Sylvain Neuvel, A History of What Comes Next (Tordotcom: Macmillan), shares " ten of his favorite alternate histories " with Publishers Weekly . 

" I didn't know he was going to be that competent in the bedroom ," Beverly Jenkins says of her character Garrett McCray in Wild Rain (Avon: HarperCollins; LJ starred review) in an interview with Entertainment Weekly .

Electric Lit  talks with Brontez Purnell about 100 Boyfriends (MCD x FSG: Macmillan).

The Rumpus  interviews Jennifer Berney , The Other Mothers: Two Women’s Journey to Find the Family That Was Always Theirs (Sourcebooks). 

The NYT goes "Inside the List" with Ashley Audrain , The Push (Pamela Dorman: Penguin). Also, examining 125 years of book reviews, the paper pulls together the elements that make a great love story . And a look at " How Getting Canceled on Social Media Can Derail a Book Deal ." 

CrimeReads ' "My First Thriller" column features Walter Mosley discussing Devil in a Blue Dress .

Datebook  speaks with Christine Suppes and Frederic Aranda about California Elegance: Portraits From the Final Frontier (Mondadori: Rizzoli).

" I wish I knew where ideas came from—I would move there ," says Lauren Oyler about Fake Accounts (Catapult: Penguin) in a conversation with BOMB .

Book Riot looks into " Reducing The Environmental Toll Of Paper In The Publishing Industry ."

The NYT has tips for how to " Create a Digital Commonplace Book ."

Authors on Air

The rights to former flight attendant T.J. Newman's buzzy forthcoming first thriller Falling (Avid Reader: S. & S.) went to Universal for a reported $1.5 million . The Hollywood Reporter has details.

Roman Mars talks with the CBC's Ideas about The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design (HMH).

James Patterson and Matt Eversmann discuss   Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from America's Bravest Warriors (Little, Brown: Hachette) on Fox News' America's Newsroom .

Nicole Perlroth discusses   This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (Bloomsbury: Macmillan) on NPR's Fresh Air . 

The Today Show features   Crossing the Line: A Fearless Team of Brothers and the Sport That Changed Their Lives Forever by Kareem Rosser (St. Martin's: Macmillan).

Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished: A Memoir (Ballantine: Random House), is on with both Kelly Clarkson and Drew Barrymore today.

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