The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

She was “too” everything—too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself.

I know about growing up in a household where love is withheld. I won’t do that to my child.”

This land provided for us. It will provide for you, too, if you let it.”

a parent’s disapproval was a powerful, lingering voice that shaped and defined one’s self-image.

it was only possible to live without love when you’d never known it.

Grandma and Mom said they should pray. Pray. As if lighting candles and kneeling could stop all of this. Clearly, if God was watching the people of the Great Plains, He wanted them to either leave or die.

Loreda didn’t want the kind of love that trapped. She wanted to be told she could fly high, be anything and go anywhere—she

He’d taught her to dream.

“Life is tough, Loreda. You need to be tougher or it will turn you inside out, as it has your father.” “Life isn’t what makes my daddy sad.” “Oh, really? Tell me, then, with all your worldly experience, what is it that makes your father unhappy?” “You,” Loreda said.

Apparently you couldn’t stop loving some people, or needing their love, even when you knew better.

Heartache had been a part of her life so long it had become as familiar as the color of her hair or the slight curve in her spine. Sometimes it was the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn’t see.

I’m in awe of her fire. Even if I’m the one who gets burned. I just … want her to be happy.

a man who had two religions—God and the land—he was dying a little each day, disappointed by them both.

she thought, Just a little rain, and once again she could believe in it. Salvation.

God had turned His back on the Great Plains.

“I can prove the penny’s luck. It brought you to us,” Rose said. Elsa wet her dry, dry lips. “You are the daughter I always wanted,” Rose said. “Ti amo.” “And you are my mother,” Elsa said. “You saved me, you know.” “Mothers and daughters. We save each other, sì?”

The sun rose and the sun fell every day; in between there were chores and meals and markers, a schedule of daily life. Here, hobbled by misery, time crawled forward.

“I’ll be here for you,” Elsa said, then added, “Maybe that’s how God provides. He put me in your path and you in mine.”

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.

Survival took grit and courage and effort. It was too easy to give in. No matter how afraid she was, she had to teach her children every day how to survive.

They found strength in each other.

Hard times don’t last. Love does.

“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.”

“Look at this tent, Loreda. Do you think we have the luxury of fighting our employers? Do you think we have the luxury of waging a philosophical war? No. Just no.

Daddy had given Loreda words; it was actions that mattered. She knew that now. Leaving. Staying. Fighting. Or walking away.

“People get scared when they lose their jobs and they tend to blame outsiders. The first step is to call them criminals. The rest is easy.

“It will get better,” Jean said. “Of course it will.” A look passed between them, a knowledge of their shared lie.

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

When it rains. When we get to California. We’ll find a way out. New words for an old, never realized hope.

she cried for all of it—the way they lived, the dreams they’d lost, the future they’d so blindly believed in.

Courage is fear you ignore.

They feared who Americans always fear: the outsider.

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.