The pursuit of love

 

Love like a panther stalks me,

Gaunt, insatiate, quench his pace,

Hot white blood spilled to sate him

Quenches the spell he casts.

Appalled at my dark guilt,

I seek to penetrate the dark thickets;

And snare him in the sultry grove,

Where he waylays my taut ardor.

This strange trek, a startled craving

Singes and snares a parched traveler.

Assaulted by the lithe cat,

He squanders his blood, his heart.

Some thoughts on loss

 

A millrace in a chagrined winter

Under an austere sun, an orange cyclops-eye

Feathered dark in thought

Reeds engraved in ice

Dryfrost glazes the window of my heart.

A conversation among the ruins by David M. Lowrey

 

Rooks and peacocks, bleakly given, have no prospects

A blight of fractured and appalling ceremonies.

A stormy frame, heroic pillars rise to the sky

Patch your black look; rooted in gross sentiment

A bleak and daunted rending, wrought with apathy

The portico croaks, "Patch me."

Blogpost: The Four Winds Review

  

Kristin Hannah has evolved as a writer in recent years.  She used to write romance novels like Firefly Lane, which were good novels but nowhere near the quality she has achieved with The Nightengale, The Great Alone, and now The Four Winds.   Her novels have become epics almost; historical novels with amazing characters.

In The Four Winds, The setting is the dust bowl in the Texas panhandle in which the main character, Elsa, lives a desperate life of censure by her parents and then forced into a shotgun marriage.  Elsa learns to love her new family, and as a city-girl turned farmer, learns to love her new life.  Then the dust bowl comes, her life and her children's life are destroyed, and they flee to California to find a better life.

At first, I thought this book was treading on the ground of The Grapes of Wrath, but as I read on I realized that this story is about Elsa and her courage.  Hannah throws the book at Elsa, giving her an incredibly hard life to overcome.  Elsa triumphs and I became attached to her as the indomitable heroine of a cruel and uncaring world.

This book is so realistic that I felt at times like there was dust in my mouth as I read.  Later, Elsa's struggle in the central valley of California equally felt real to me.  This is a great novel and a pleasure to read.  5/5 stars, very highly recommended.

This book will not be commercially available until February 2021.