The first time Kristin Hannah tore my heart out was when I read “The Four Winds.”
Published in 2021, the story starts in the 1920s and follows awkward Elsa Martinelli. Sick of the life her parents present to her, she goes out on her own to seek adventure.
That one night changes the course of Elsa’s life and what follows is romance, abandonment and hardship as she moves from Texas during the Dust Bowl to seek a better life in California in the 1930s amid the Great Depression.
Those who have experience reading Hannah know she doesn’t flinch from hardship and in fact leans into it in her historical fiction novels. We see Elsa through unimaginable hard times as she tries to protect her children in extreme circumstances. It also features a complicated mother-daughter relationship, tough decisions and so much loss—of relationships, friends, family members and home.
The sweeping American epic practically screams adaptation and, although there is not a lot of information on it yet, Hannah said in an interview with Pan Macmillan in 2022, that it was indeed “moving towards the movie world.”
“‘The Four Winds’ is an important novel for people to understand what’s going on in our world today and what happened a hundred years ago so I would really like to see ‘The Four Winds’ message get out on screen,” she added.
In the interview, Hannah was discussing “Firefly Lane,” her 2008 novel that Netflix adapted into a two-season series starring Kathryn Heigl and Sarah Chalke as lifelong best friends Tully and Kate.
The women are opposites in every way, and their friendship is tested by betrayal and tragedy.
The successful series debuted at the top of Nielsen’s streaming charts, with viewers watching 1.31 billion minutes of it.
Hannah’s stories proved to attract a very important demographic—older Millennial and Gen-X women.
In 2021, Hannah also announced that her 2015 bestseller “The Nightingale” was being adapted into a film by TriStar Pictures. The World War II drama stars real-life sisters Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning as French siblings, Vianne and Isabelle, navigating life under Nazi occupation.
The movie, which is currently being filmed, is scheduled to open in theaters on Feb. 12, 2027.
In 2024, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group acquired the rights to Hannah’s novel “The Women,” before it was even published.
The coming-of-age novel follows young nurse Frankie McGrath, who serves two tours in the Vietnam War. It shows her struggle with her family, who disapprove of her decision to become a military nurse, her bond with other nurses, the loss and horror of war, and the politics of the time, as women’s role in the Vietnam War was often overlooked.
Information on casting and the director has not been released.
The other Hannah book getting the movie treatment is perhaps her most brutal—“The Great Alone.”
Leni’s father, a Vietnam vet, has PTSD and is prone to violence. Leni and her mother have to fight for survival in a place of solitude and unpredictable weather. It follows Leni through adulthood and her tight bonds with the people in Alaska and her love for her mother.
Hannah said she looks forward to seeing “The Great Alone” on screen.
“It has such a beautiful imagery of Alaska and Alaska is very close to my heart,” she said. “I’d really love to see someone take that novel and film this beautiful picture of Alaska.”
The 2018 historical novel follows the story of pre-teen Leni Albright, whose family inherits a home in the Alaskan wilderness in the mid-1970s.
About the writer
S. Lynn Bonanno is a recent fan of Kristin Hannah’s emotional historical fiction novels. Her favorites so far are “The Women” and “The Four Winds.” She is currently reading “The Nightingale” slowly because she is still emotionally recovering from “The Great Alone,” which absolutely wrecked her. “Home Front,” meanwhile, was fine.
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