'The Four Winds' shines light on strong women during Great Depression

Not since the two John Steinbeck classics Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath, both published toward the end of the Great Depression, has an author taken such a stark look at that era as Kristin Hannah does in The Four Winds.

Historical novels usually feature men in the lead roles, but Hannah has always tried to keep women at the forefront of her books, and The Four Winds is no different. Through her lead characters, she illustrates the pain and suffering that women had to endure through the Great Depression in the middle of the Dust Bowl that swept across the Great Plains for almost a decade in the 1930s.

The Four Winds take a peek at the strength of women and their families during the Great Depression

Hannah shows the bustling prosperity of farm communities through the Great Plains during the booming 1920s. Elsa Wolcott is a tall, plain woman with a heart condition living in northern Texas with her family. His father is a prosperous, small-town farm equipment dealer.

Elsa had suffered an illness when she was a teenager, and a doctor told her family she should never have a strain on her heart. She was also tall and awkward, and not nearly as pretty as her two younger sisters. For years, her parents have kept her safely hidden away from the world like Quasimodo amongst his gargoyles in Notre Dame.

She's an avid reader and longs to travel and see the places in her books. maybe go to college, and she longs for love and companionship. Her parents deny her these very basic human needs and desires. Yet, she finds the strength to escape her prison one night and she has an experience that she has both longed for and changes her life.

She eventually becomes an embarrassment for her family, but she finds the love she has been looking for. She marries and moves in with her husband's parents, a proud immigrant farming family by the name of Martinelli in another small town, away from the family who didn't want her.

The booming prosperity of the 1920s quickly turns into poverty and depredation after the stock market crash in 1929. Farming communities are hit particularly hard as massive heat, long draughts, and massive dust storms sweep across the high plains, destroying crops year after year.

Hannah does a terrific job of putting the readers into the lives of her characters. You can feel the pressure of the adults doing whatever they can to provide the barest minimum for the family. The reader sees the community shrivel as the Great Depression continues, as hopes and dreams die.

Readers live through the horrors of the invasive dust storms, so thick as to block out the sun. They feel the sanity-threatening, heart-rendering, soul-sucking presence of the constant grime and grit these storms bring into their home, food, and clothes. Readers can hear the howling, loneliness-inducing winds that accompany these storms, often for days on end.

More and more people leave the town and many head for California, where well-paying jobs are supposed to be plentiful. The Martinellis try their best to hang on because the land is theirs and it is part of their life. Circumstances just make it more and more difficult.

If there is one criticism of this book, it comes here. The story drags on during this section at a depressing pace and Hannah may have slightly overdid this part of her story. It wasn't an exaggeration, but the story stalls here just a bit.

Eventually, the family just cannot survive on the farm any longer. They agree to try their luck in California, but at the last moment, Elsa's in-laws decide they cannot leave their land, but they give their only truck, and the little money they have to Elsa and she takes Loreda and Anthony to California.

They do not find a land of milk and honey. They find a hostile place that abuses and takes advantage of the desperate migrant workers. Again Elsa, Loreda, and Anthony find themselves in poverty, scraping by just to survive.

Loreda is a young woman just finding her voice. She admires her mother's strength but thinks she's too protective. She wants to fight the establishment for what is right, yet Elsa just wants to protect her children and make sure they survive.

As the book progresses, Elsa comes to learn that she is stronger than her mother ever imagined she could be, and she wasn't the weak ugly duckling she'd been led to believe in her youth. She discovers her strength as a mother and as a person in her own right. In her way, she discovers her voice in a powerful way.

The struggles described in The Four Winds were real, both in Texas and in California. Families everywhere suffered through the decade. We don't often see the sacrifices of women during that time, or their strengths. Hannah puts you in Elsa's shoes and lets you feel what Elsa had to go through and what strength she possessed, even when Elsa didn't understand it herself.

It is a beautiful period piece, about a time and places that don't often get the attention they deserve in history. Hannah is brilliant in giving women a voice in history in general, and in this era specifically. It's written with love and passion and it's certainly worth reading.

The Four Winds is available through Macmillan Publishers