The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Press, 2021)

The phrase “to the four winds” means in all or many different directions or across a wide area (said of something that has been dispersed). [https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/to+the+four+winds] In the story of Elsa Martinelli (and to a lesser extent, her daughter Loreda), Kristin Hannah has written a Tom Joad story that focuses on the women (and girls) of the Dust Bowl. Their strength and resilience against impossible odds form the backbone of this novel of the 1930s, set in the Texas panhandle and California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Elsinore “Elsa” Wolcott had rheumatic fever as a child, and from a young age, she was made to feel sickly, inferior, and unattractive by her bigoted middle-class parents and the usual school bullies. Her attempts to break free of these prejudices are destined to fail. At the age of 25, in a bold act of defiance, she allows herself to be seduced by a handsome, charming Italian American from the next town, Raffaello Martinelli; of course, she gets pregnant. Rejected by her parents and foisted onto her lover’s family, she begins her married life under a cloud, but she is so eager to please and so hardworking that Rafe’s parents soon accept her into their home and give her the familial love she has always lacked. She has the baby–a girl that they name Loreda–and then a son, Anthony “Ant”. And then the Depression hits, and the drought, and the dust storms, and the crop failures, and the repossessions, and then Rafe abandons his parents, his wife, and his children, who are left to try to survive until the rains return.

Elsa’s in-laws, Tony and Rose, are determined to stay on their land, which they see as the salvation of their family, but they are finally forced to admit that they will die if they all stay, so they encourage Elsa to leave for California with the children; angry teen-aged Loreda, who blames her mother for everything that is wrong with her life, and 8-year-old Ant, a cheerful child. Their long, difficult drive west and their struggle to find work that will sustain them when they reach the San Joaquin Valley, constitute the rest of the novel. They encounter much cruelty, greed, and prejudice, but also kindness, friendship, and love. I enjoyed Elsa’s story, the ending of which I won’t divulge here.