The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.

“You are of me, Loreda, in a way that can never be broken. Not by words or anger or actions or time. I love you. I will always love you.” She tightened her hold on Loreda’s shoulders. “You taught me love. You, first in the whole world, and my love for you will outlive me.

“Of course. Fear is smart until…” He headed for the door, paused as he reached for the knob. “Until what?” He looked back at her. “Until you realize you’re afraid of the wrong thing.”

“It’s not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.”

There was no way to get ahead, no way to get out.

The American dream?

“Ah, Elsa. You got a wrong picture of yourself.” “Even if that is true, what does a person do about it? The things your parents say and the things your husband doesn’t say become a mirror, don’t they? You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.” “Break it,” Jean said. “How?” “With a gosh dang rock.” Jean leaned forward. “I’m a mirror, too, Elsa. You remember that.”

“I’ll tell you what’s un-American, and that’s big farmers getting richer while you get poorer,” Jack said.

“I’m sorry,” Loreda said. “For—” “No sorries. We fought, we struggled, we hurt each other, so what? That’s what love is, I think. It’s all of it. Tears, anger, joy, struggle. Mostly, it’s durable. It lasts. Never once in all of it—the dust, the drought, the fights with you—never once did I stop loving you or Ant or the farm.”

It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it.

Love is what remains when everything else is gone.

The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.

In the end, it is our idealism and our courage and our commitment to one another—what we have in common—that will save us.