The Four Winds
“The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very end of this great land.”
For those of us in Montecito we are all too familiar with land we love, though lush and verdant it has on occasion “betrayed” us with drought, fires, mudslides. Still, California is the land of “milk and honey,” a place of opportunity, agricultural abundance and temperate climates.
Kristin Hannah’s compelling new novel “The Four Winds” is set during the Great Depression. Elsa Martinelli is living in Texas on her family’s farm struggling on land that has turned on them. Year-after-year they endure dust storms that blow for days, choking everything. While their livestock starve, so does the family. Hope diminishes. To stay is unendurable. With her two children, one who is desperately sick, Elsa sets off, crossing the Great Plains in search of the American Dream.
“Our kind are hardworking Americans who have hit hard times,” Elsa says, but the people in her new California town don’t want her kind; dirty, poor migrants. Searching for work, she instead finds xenophobia; locals aren’t happy to see a thousand a day “Oakies” pouring into California. No one will rent Elsa a room. No one will hire her.
I spoke with Hannah who explains when migrants arrived here, it was “a time of
great tension and mistrust… when most Californians were already suffering.”
Elsa sets up “home” in a crowded migrant camp, sleeping on dirty floors. Eventually, she secures work at a large labor camp picking cotton, renting a cabin, with real floors, buying food from the company store. All on credit. With low wages and no labor protections, Elsa spirals deeper into debt.
“The Four Winds” is a sweeping story about the strength of a woman discovering how to be brave. It is as much a story about the migrants, and the injustices they faced, as it is a story about love of family, and who we call family, about a community that pulls together to feed, cloth, nurse the sick. As our community here has often done.
I found myself chocking up over several heart wrenching scenes, hospitals that turn away sick migrants, schools that don’t want their children. As much cruelty as is displayed there is also love and the coming together of community to help one another in Hannah’s emotional novel. Her prose is lyrical, her novel epic and it is one of those stories you will sink into. Elsa discovers she is courageous. As she is reminded, as we can all be reminded these days, “Hard times don’t last. Love does.”
More stories: “Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember” by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, an extraordinary memoir about a 33-year-old aspiring writer who loses her short-term memory and her words. If you like thrillers check out Rachel Hawkins’ “The Wife Upstairs.” Jane’s new boyfriend might or might not have anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of his last wife. Lots of great twists in this one.
For those of us in Montecito we are all too familiar with land we love, though lush and verdant it has on occasion “betrayed” us with drought, fires, mudslides. Still, California is the land of “milk and honey,” a place of opportunity, agricultural abundance and temperate climates.
Kristin Hannah’s compelling new novel “The Four Winds” is set during the Great Depression. Elsa Martinelli is living in Texas on her family’s farm struggling on land that has turned on them. Year-after-year they endure dust storms that blow for days, choking everything. While their livestock starve, so does the family. Hope diminishes. To stay is unendurable. With her two children, one who is desperately sick, Elsa sets off, crossing the Great Plains in search of the American Dream.
“Our kind are hardworking Americans who have hit hard times,” Elsa says, but the people in her new California town don’t want her kind; dirty, poor migrants. Searching for work, she instead finds xenophobia; locals aren’t happy to see a thousand a day “Oakies” pouring into California. No one will rent Elsa a room. No one will hire her.
I spoke with Hannah who explains when migrants arrived here, it was “a time of
great tension and mistrust… when most Californians were already suffering.”
Elsa sets up “home” in a crowded migrant camp, sleeping on dirty floors. Eventually, she secures work at a large labor camp picking cotton, renting a cabin, with real floors, buying food from the company store. All on credit. With low wages and no labor protections, Elsa spirals deeper into debt.
“The Four Winds” is a sweeping story about the strength of a woman discovering how to be brave. It is as much a story about the migrants, and the injustices they faced, as it is a story about love of family, and who we call family, about a community that pulls together to feed, cloth, nurse the sick. As our community here has often done.
I found myself chocking up over several heart wrenching scenes, hospitals that turn away sick migrants, schools that don’t want their children. As much cruelty as is displayed there is also love and the coming together of community to help one another in Hannah’s emotional novel. Her prose is lyrical, her novel epic and it is one of those stories you will sink into. Elsa discovers she is courageous. As she is reminded, as we can all be reminded these days, “Hard times don’t last. Love does.”
More stories: “Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember” by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, an extraordinary memoir about a 33-year-old aspiring writer who loses her short-term memory and her words. If you like thrillers check out Rachel Hawkins’ “The Wife Upstairs.” Jane’s new boyfriend might or might not have anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of his last wife. Lots of great twists in this one.
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