The Four Winds: A Review

 

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah: A Review

A few things come to mind while it’s still fresh. It’s about courage, adaptation and fighting for the next generation. That’s a broad swath of themes I’ll admit. I thought the story might focus too much on the mother daughter relationship and ignore the plot, not so. It’s as much historical as it is relational. There are pro-labor undertones that books about the Great Depression just can’t help but inject.

Setting

The Four Winds is a story about adapting to difficult circumstances and pushing aside the fear long enough to survive. Set in the Depression era, Texas wheat farmers struggle to keep their land despite reckless dust storms and drought. A young woman (Elsa Wolcott) from a well-to-do family gets pregnant from by an Italian farm boy, Rafe Martinelli. Her family forces her to live with the Italian (immigrant) family in a harsh send off. She’s not suited to farm life. Her previous days were spent with books and learning. Even in her childhood home she is unloved. Her unattractive looks (compared to her sisters) create her nagging low self esteem.

But she’s determined to make her life work with her young husband and in-laws out on the prairie in the Texas pan handle. Life is hard but fair. You plant fields and get a harvest. People from what would be called the Dustbowl region lived on mostly wheat, cotton and corn. But prices started falling in the late 1920s then the Great Depression hits, making it worse for everyone. The arid land was depleted due to over-farming and a lack of rain. A severe drought caused dramatic dust storms that buried homes and made it impossible to grow anything. Many packed up and moved to California for work in the massive orchards and cotton fields just to stay alive.

Conflict

This Dustbowl history is the backdrop for the harsh conditions that Elsa and her husband Rafe survive in. They have two children: a girl, Laredo and a young boy, Ant. Rafe isn’t quite up to the life of toiling on the farm just to survive another day in the diminishing land. He takes off for California to find work, leaving his family to fend for themselves. Eventually conditions force Elsa and her kids off the farm as well, and to California for work.

A lot of the tension in the story is between Elsa and Laredo. Laredo blames her mother for her father leaving. She’s passionate for a different life and can’t imagine being a farmer. Her needs are purely selfish but understandable. Elsa’s rejection from multiple people (Rafe, her family) is too familiar and it creates a toughness in her. But also, it limits her view of herself, her attractiveness and worth. Through trial and error, she learns when to push and when to back off. Will Laredo ever see her mother’s sacrifice as something other than weakness?

Effect

 The author, Kristin Hannah shows poverty and among Okies as effectively as John Steinbeck did with the Grapes of Wrath. From the traveling jalopies packed with family possessions to the squatter’s camp full of hopeless migrants, it’s a sad portrait of extreme desperation. Hannah’s intention was to show a terse but grudgingly respectful bond between mother and daughter. But any reader will also be moved to gratitude for the age we live in. Our country could descend easily into another depression with just a push. The dollar could collapse, oil could become very cheap (or very expensive) and credit could completely dry up. These are real possibilities.

It's not fear but gratitude that makes me appreciate paychecks, full gas tanks and grocery shopping. For all the rich narration and social/pollical overtones, it might be the description of destitute families clawing for survival that has lasting resonance with me.

Stories come alive in ways that historical facts alone never could. They put flesh and blood on the skeleton. Most of us know a little about the Dust Bowl but need a fuller picture. Yes, this story is fictional but reflects so many similar scenarios across the country during the Dust Bowl migration. Starting over is a difficult chore in any economy. All the more true in a depression, with a family in tow and no work to speak of. Federal Aid was spotty in those days as FDR’s New Deal programs struggled to be consistent. Starvation and death were closer than imaginable.

complaint

My only complaint is the hero status of the labor organizer, Jack Valen (Great name for sure). Despite Elsa’s hand to mouth existence, Hannah makes the guy Not Providing Jobs the plucky hero. I get desperate times and desperate measures, but the price crunch in commodities affects everyone. Yes, even the bastard land owner working families to the bone. How much work would be available if the cotton didn’t have a market? Communist’s only think of workers and never capital. It’s a simplified way to look at difficult times.

Conclusion

 I’m surprised she missed the similarity between Laredo’s immature attitude on life and her embrace of communism. A number of scenes play out with her practically stomping her feet at the injustice of her family’s situation. It’s a perfect exhibit of communism’s emotional appeal and youthful ignorance of complex economies.

It's a heartbreaking story of accepting struggle and finding inner strength for life’s journey. The Four Winds won’t make you feel good, but it will make you appreciate your life and realize how much worse it could be.