She’s determined to raise her children with love and with a connection to the land, their heritage. Her devotion to her new family only grows once she gives birth to her daughter Loreda. Suddenly, Elsa has family and a place, and learns to embrace the farm, the household, the culture, and the people. When Elsa’s parents realize that she’s pregnant, they force her to pack a suitcase and drive her to Rafe’s parents’ farm, where they drop her on their doorstep and never look back.Īgainst all odds, it’s here that Elsa truly finds love and purpose in life - not with her unexpected husband, but in his family’s home. Despite her love of reading and interest in education, her parents won’t even consider her request to attend college.Įlsa is doomed to a solitary life, until one day, a rebellious moment leads her to venture out in a pretty dress to go to a speakeasy, and she meets a young man, Rafe, whose interest will change her life.

Their scorn and dismissal have led to Elsa’s internalization of their cruelty - she sees her self as unattractive and uninteresting. For reasons that are impossible to fathom, her parents have treated her as someone unworthy of love all her life. The Four Winds is a powerful, dramatic, and heart-breaking book set during the Great Depression, with an incredibly strong and memorable woman as its lead character and emotional core.Įlsa is the oldest daughter of a wealthy Texas family when we first meet her in 1921. 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. 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. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras-the Great Depression.

The four winds kristin hannah summary