Play Book Tag discussion

I think this fits for the focus on women in this period of history.


The Four Winds – Kristin Hannah
Audiobook performed by Julia Whelan
4****

As she did in The Nightingale , Hannah uses female characters to tell a bit of the history of a time and place. In this work, the timeframe is 1920s to mid-1930s, and the place is America, specifically the Great Plains and California.

Elsa Wolcott had a bad start in life despite being born into a prosperous family; she was sickly as a child and rather plain, especially as compared to her sister. Her parents have declared it her fate to be a spinster. But Elsa wants more. Her need leads to some bad decisions, and she winds up in a hasty marriage to an unsuitable man. Still, Rafe Martinelli’s family accepts her, and she learns to become a wife and mother. And then the Depression and the Dust Bowl hit their Texas wheat farm.

Elsa turns out to be quite the warrior. She is fiercely protective of her children, in turns frightened and courageous, but determined and willing to nearly kill herself in the fields to feed her family. She is suspicious of dreams of a better tomorrow because dreams don’t put food on the table or a roof over one’s head. But when pushed just a little to far, Elsa will answer the call to fight. Brava!

I loved Elsa’s teen-aged daughter, Loreda. Oh, I definitely recognized the push-pull of the mother-daughter relationship as the youngster is trying so hard to grow up. I feared for her but cheered Loreda on as she found her voice and learned to temper her impulses with good sense and planning.

And I also loved the mother-daughter relationship between Elsa and her mother-in-law Rose. Here is a woman who has seen hard times, but retains her faith in God, and in hard work, and in sacrifice to see them through the toughest trials. She shows Elsa the kind of love that helps her release the strong woman inside her.

I’ve heard some say it’s like Steinbeck’s masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath , but with the focus on women. I certainly see the comparison, but I always felt the most important character in that classic was Ma.

While I saw a couple of plot points coming a mile off, the (view spoiler)[twist at the end caught me by surprise, and I found myself crying in my car in the grocery store parking lot (hide spoiler)].

Julia Whelan does a superb job of narrating the audio edition. As a bonus there is an interview with both Hannah and Whelan at the end of the book. I had to laugh when they went to such pains to avoid spoiling the ending; they even acknowledged the folly of this since, if the listener has gotten to the interview, she’s already read (listened to) the twist at the end.



LINK to my review

I read both The Nightingale and The Four Winds relatively close to each other. I read The Four Winds first. I thought it was sad and mildly depressing. The things Elsa and her daughter go through are unrelenting -one grave situation after another. At least with The Nightingale there is a sense of optimism.