Chapter Nine: Late Summer Winds

Lady King
Sep 8
4 min read

Updated: Sep 29

Drought. Grief. Grit.

It was one of those late summer afternoons where the sun hangs low but lingers,

where everything glows gold. Not because it’s soft, but because it’s still burning.

You open the window not out of comfort, but out of curiosity. The air is warm, but something is shifting. A breeze rolls in, slow and steady, and you pause.

You wonder what’s coming next.

That’s what The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah felt.

Not a gust of plot or an immediate storm, but a slow build. A story that starts warm and gentle, and somehow, without warning, sweeps you into something you didn’t expect. A heat that deepens. A wind that rises. A woman you can’t forget.

At First Glance

This was a book I didn’t need to be convinced to read.

It came as a recommendation, a quiet nudge from the same woman who introduced me to The Great Alone, another masterwork by Kristin Hannah. That book broke me open in the best way, so when she said, “You’ll want to read this too,” I didn’t even check the back cover. I trusted the story was meant for me.

The cover itself felt like a message.

Sleek black like scorched soil, streaked with golden wheat. Dust speckled around the edges like forgotten treasure. Stark, strong, simple — just like the heroine I was about to meet.

Cracking the Binding on The Four Winds

We meet Elsa in the 1920s, in a small Texas town where beauty is currency and obedience is survival.

Elsa is told she has neither. Her family; prominent, Protestant, and proud, sees her as too plain, too sickly, too unmarriageable to ever be chosen.

After a childhood illness, a doctor warns her to live carefully. Her heart, he says, is too fragile for anything wild. So she lives small. Safe. Alone.

Until one night, she dares to dream in satin.

She sews herself a dress — something soft, something beautiful. Her mother scolds her and cuts it apart for scraps, giving the fabric to her sisters instead.

But something in Elsa has already changed.

That night, she sneaks out and meets Rafe, an 18-year-old Italian boy with dreams of escape. She’s in her twenties. He’s engaged to someone else. But in that one summer night, with dust in the air and hope still clinging to the stars, they cross a line they can’t uncross.

When Elsa becomes pregnant, her family drives her to Rafe’s farmhouse and leaves her there... disowned, humiliated, and utterly alone.

Rafe’s family, bound by tradition, takes her in.

A quick marriage follows. And though Rafe’s heart is never really in it, Elsa devotes herself to this strange new life. She gives birth to a daughter, Loretta, and later a son, Anthony.

And somewhere in all the dust and duty, something unexpected blooms:

Love... not with Rafe, but with his mother.

Elsa’s relationship with her mother-in-law becomes one of the most tender in the book. He sees her strength, values her spirit, and treats her like family in all the ways her own parents never could. It’s not loud or dramatic. It’s quiet, patient, earned. And when Elsa is forced to leave him behind… it hurts more than almost anything else.

But the land is growing brittle. And so is Rafe.

The Dust Comes

Texas turns to tinder.

What begins as dry weather becomes devastation. Years of windstorms, crop failure, and something called The Dust Bowl, where whole farms are swallowed in a cloud of grit. The bankers become banksters, forcing foreclosures and snatching up land while families starve.

Rafe can’t take it. One night, he vanishes without a word.

And so Elsa, broken but unbowed, packs what’s left of her life into a truck and drives her children west. toward California and the promise of a better future.

But the golden state isn’t gold for everyone.

There are no jobs. No shelter. No welcome.

They’re treated as outsiders — migrants, beggars, pests.

Even the unions trying to help are torn apart by fear and corruption. And yet somehow, Elsa finds something unshakable inside her.

Something her family never saw.

Something the drought couldn’t kill.

Closing the Book on

The Four Winds

This book left me teary-eyed.

Not just because of what happens, but because of what it asks:

What does it mean to survive?

To be good when no one sees you?

To mother, to fight, to endure — and still hold onto a dream?

I gave The Four Winds an 8/10. Some parts moved fast (especially the ending), and I wanted more time to linger with the characters. But overall, this is a story I’ll carry for a long time, especially beside The Great Alone, which still has a permanent place in my heart.

If you love historical fiction rooted in emotion and endurance… this one belongs on your shelf.