| C (characters) | A (atmosphere) | W (writing) | P (plot) | I (intrigue) | L (logic) | E (enjoyment) | Rating | ☆ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 9.43 | 5 |
Book Review: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah - themhayonnaise
Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.
She would take whatever she could get from Rafe and pay whatever price there was for it. Even going to hell. He’d made her feel more beautiful in one minute than the rest of the world had in twenty-five years.
“Or will you just put up with this puttana’s child?” Elsa didn’t know what the word meant, but she knew it wasn’t kind. “Because I know about growing up in a household where love is withheld. I won’t do that to my child.”
“When you are a mother, you will know how I feel right now,” Mrs. Martinelli said at last. “The dreams for your children are so … so…” She stopped, looked away as tears filled her eyes, then went on. “You cannot imagine the sacrifices we made so that Raffaello could have a better life than we’ve had.”
Here, she sometimes thought, standing on land she cared for, here her child would flourish, would run and play and learn the stories told by the ground and the grapes and the wheat.
In Rose’s dark, tear-brightened eyes, Elsa saw a perfect reflection of her own emotions and a soul-deep understanding of this bond—motherhood—shared by women for millennia.
Work, work, work. As if that would save them.
“Yeah, well. I made a bad choice a few years back, and … well … sometimes your life is chosen for you.” After that, he was quiet for a long time. “What bad choice?” He didn’t look at her. His body was sitting beside her, but his mind was somewhere else.
She knew it was wrong to be angry with her mother now—the weather wasn’t her fault—but Loreda couldn’t help herself. She was mad at the world, and somehow that meant she was mad at her mom most of all.
she stood ramrod stiff. She had perfected an unyielding, unforgiving stance: shoulders back, spine straight, chin up. Wisps of corn-silk-fine pale blond hair crept out from beneath her kerchief.
“My parents, my family,” Elsa said quietly. This was something she rarely talked about, a pain too deep for words, especially when words wouldn’t change anything; Loreda’s opinion of Elsa lately had brought all that heartache of youth back.
Everyone knew who to blame for the Depression but not how to fix it.
“Do you really think you’ve failed me?” “Look at us. Walking back to a cabin smaller than our old toolshed. Both of us skinny as matchsticks and hungry all of the time. Of course I’ve failed you.” “Mom,” Loreda said, moving close. “I’m alive because of you. I go to school. I can think because you want to make sure I always do. You haven’t failed me. You’ve saved me.”
Men. They always thought everything was about them. But women could stand up for their rights, too; women could hold picket signs and stop the means of production
“But you know how my life really changed? It wasn’t marriage. It was the farm. Rose and Tony. I found a place to belong, people who loved me, and they became the home I’d dreamed about as a girl. And then you came along and taught me how big love could be.”
It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it.
A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.
Love is what remains when everything else is gone.
Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation.
“Moms know everything, kid.”
She can sense when the sadness rises in me; some days she gives me space with my grief, some days she takes my hand. I don’t know how, but she always knows which I need.
In the end, it is our idealism and our courage and our commitment to one another—what we have in common—that will save us.
The Four Winds - Notebook.html