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.
Comment: This is the third book by the author I try this year. Of her four most recent books, which are all labeled as "women's fiction" and "historical fiction" (opposed to her earlier novels which seem more a mix of romance and woman's fiction), this is the one I have liked the least.
Elsa Martinelli and her family live in Texas, in the early s, when the Great Depression hits their farm, as well as everyone else's. Things become practically impossible but most farmers hold on to the hope that next year, surely, rain will come and the land will start to recover. Elsa gained everything when she married Rafe even though their relationship wasn't set on love. She gained a father and mother in law and a daughter, and then a son, and a land she loves with all of her being. The only reason she contemplates leaving for California, where the opportunities seem to be there for everyone who seeks them, is due to her son's health. Little Anthony won't last long in a place where dust is everywhere, but will the price to survive be too high for this family? Will they make it?
Just like all the other readers going into this book, I knew the plot would not be a happy one for most of the time and if things were to follow the same pattern I had seen in the other books I had read by this author, then it would be obvious that a lot of despair and sadness would co-exist with simple happy moments.
In fact, it was so and more: I think this book had a much higher amount of despairing scenes than the other way around and a good part of the reason I didn't enjoy it as much was due to this. I can see why the story couldn't be light, and I can understand why the author felt like stressing out the terrible possibilities of what happened in real life for countless people during those times, but as a fictional novel I also expected some balance. However, everything seemed to be too harsh, all the time.
I'd say the only time things seemed easier were at first, when Elsa leaves her family to live with her new one. Still, even this was not easy to go through, but I always thought the author would find a way to counterbalance the bad things with some later period of more calm or stability, like in The Great Alone and The Women, which also had heroines going through very harsh periods and then, at some point, even without a traditional HEA one sees in romance novels, they found ways to have a life in which they could think and plan and have some peace, even at a personal cost.
I don't think I saw that here and felt that Elsa just suffered through so much in a way that felt unbalanced because she had no real support system while she was in California, at least not like when she had while in Texas. Of course, this has to be intentional, so that we can try to imagine how many suffered with things we now feel are way too far from our reality, but while reading I've kept thinking that Elsa and the others being dealt a terrible fate were shown only a version of events and it shouldn't. I get it that the point was to highlight the traumas and the unfairness of those who lived what Elsa did, but the quiet, happy moments weren't enough. Reading this novel was tiring by how sad it was.
Personally, I'm not fond of misery to simply make one emotional. I don't mind characters going through hard times if at some point that pays off somehow. I don't really feel we were given this here, considering how the book ends. I really feel annoyed at that, but I can accept why it works for other readers and why the author might have imagined it would increase the ideas she conveyed. Perhaps, if the characters surrounding Elsa had really been good secondary characters... the way things happened, apart from her son Anthony, everyone else felt too distant from her, as if only playing a role, to better contrast with per personality.
After finishing, I've checked some negative reviews - to see if it was for the same reasons I felt like giving this a 3 star rating - and saw that no, the majority of negative reviews I saw were so because of how the author portrayed Communism in the book. I really won't go into it because it would certainly offend someone but... what a ridiculous reason to downgrade this book. I mean... well, I should not care because everyone can have an opinion, but some people really have a very short span of awareness.
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