The Four Winds

By Kristin Hannah

Searching for an audiobook to keep me company on my walks, the library app, Libby, recommended The Four Winds, a book that I found riveting!  It brings to life the devastation visited on people and property by the Dust Bowl - the great ecological disaster that struck the American prairies in the 1930’s, contributing to the Great Depression.

The story opens in northwestern Texas in 2021.  Elsa Wolcott is the eldest of three daughters in a middle- class family.  A tall, ungainly survivor of rheumatic fever, she is treated by her unloving parents as the “black sheep” in her family – a hopeless spinster who is too weak to function in society.  She remains cloistered in her bedroom reading novels and longing to break away.  Overcome by yearning and desperation, she escapes the confines of her room and runs out into the night in search of adventure. Although she gets what she wants, the consequences become the outline the brilliantly told series of events that make the unfolding story difficult to put down. 

The story jumps to 1934 with the country deep into the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl laying waste to the prairie.  In the interest of allowing you, the reader, to relish the unfolding of subsequent events, suffice it to say,  we are introduced to a number of memorable, exquisitely-drawn characters as Elsa endures the ravages of unyielding ecological, economic and societal disaster while demonstrating her inner strength, endurance and resilience! This is a story that brings us face to face with a history we shall long remember.

                                                                                                   Susan Barron