The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

To damage the earth is to damage your children.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Be brave, into her ear. And then, Or pretend to be. It’s all the same.

“When times is tough and jobs is scarce, folks blame the outsider. It’s human nature.

Elsa hadn’t known until right then how much difference a friend could make. How one person could lift your spirit just enough to keep you upright.

Elsa knew that a library card—a thing they’d taken for granted all of their lives—meant there was still a future. A world beyond this struggle.

Tonight, later, she would write about her constant fear, how it strangled her all the time and the constant effort it took not to show it to her children.

They feared who Americans always fear: the outsider.

A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.

“Men wear masks because they’re ashamed of what they’re doing,”