Although the dirty 30s in America are not a time period I’d normally read about, I did want to find out what makes Kristin Hannah’s books so successful. While waiting to get a copy of her mega-hit, The Nightingale , I got the audiobook version of The Four Winds. I love the way she is able to use simple language to create such evocative images. Here’s my review of the book.
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thought I knew about the Great Depression and the Dustbowl but I really had no true appreciation of the actual living conditions people experienced during it. You hear about people “riding the rails” or watching their crops die and blow away but that is an intellectual knowledge. What impressed me most about Kristin Hannah’s writing is her ability to make the conditions so vivid: images of a dying horse with dirt-filled mucus dripping from its nose and mouth, brown milk coming out of a bony, half-starved cow because it has inhaled so much dust and dirt, and the horrendous discrimination and mistreatment faced by American migrants who arrived in California looking for work. For those who have trouble imagining what life is like today for people trying to get into the US because they are starving in their own countries, this book gives you a powerful way to imagine yourself in their shoes (or bare feet), and is so much more shocking when you realize that this was how Americans were treating their fellow citizens. (And, one might argue, still are treating some of them, particularly those with addictions or mental health challenges.)
What I loved best about the book was the relationship between the 13-year-old daughter and her mother. The author so perfectly showed the rage and anger of the child, her sense that her mother is doing everything wrong, and the mother’s love and pain as she watches her once adoring child turn into this angry critic. Rare is the parent who hasn’t gone through this stage with their daughter. The relationship between the two of them evolves in such an honest way, with the ups and downs of a real mother-daughter relationship.
My only criticism of the book is that it could have used tighter editing. At times, especially as it neared the end, I felt that it became redundant and overly didactic. Nevertheless, the story was strong enough that I stuck it out till the end, and it was worth doing so.
