My work has not achieved any acclaim in the publication-for-profit world of the traditional presses.

“ Outstanding…(A) rich, rewarding read about family ties, perseverance, and women’s friendships and fortitude.” “ Epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love…Majestic and absorbing.” Hannah says in her “Author’s Note,” that the strike is fictional but based on strikes that took place in California. The Labor movement and “Communists” were part of the book’s plot as union organizers tried to convince the migrant workers to rise up against the oppression of the big growers who hired at the lowest possible rate and then cut their pay as more desperate people came. The more workers that arrived in the state ready to take whatever pittance was offered, only made the situation worse, and the pay lower. She depicts the horrid conditions and the appeal of working for a “company” that offered a place to live and credit at the company stores, all the while taking more and more money out of the nominal pay workers were already receiving. Hannah goes onto explore the desperate circumstances families faced when they can’t get work after arriving in California. The description of “Hooverville” camps felt real based on what I already knew about the Depression and the dire conditions working families found themselves in. Her husband, Rafe, can’t take the pressure and leaves Elsa and her children on the farm constantly battling horrible dust storms, dying livestock, and drought-stricken crops. Overnight she becomes a farm laborer and a member of the hard-working Martinelli family.Įlsa’s marriage and new life start in the 1920s on a thriving farm in Texas, but disintegrates over the next decade as the drought and dust of the 1930s make life nearly impossible. Elsa is kicked out of her home and makes a hasty marriage to Rafe. What happens when a lonely spinster meets a rakish guy ready for action?

Her affluent, socially conscious family loathes her for her looks and her sickliness.Įnter Rafe Martinelli, a good-looking Italian youth from a nearby farm. Elsa sees herself as unattractive and homely compared to her two other sisters. The main character is Elsa Wolcott, a lonely, twenty-five-year-old woman who suffered from rheumatic fever as a child. Hannah’s newest novel, The Four Winds, begins in the 1920s in a small Texas town.

The four winds kristin hannah summary