The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

There were times in my journey when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.

To damage the earth is to damage your children.

There was a pain that came with constant disapproval; a sense of having lost something unnamed, unknown. Elsa had survived it by being quiet, by not demanding or seeking attention, by accepting that she was loved, but unliked.

Fight for yourself. Be brave.

He’d been the only Wolcott besides Elsa who loved reading, and he’d frequently taken her side in family disagreements. Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.

“Everything,” she said. “My grandfather was a Texas Ranger. He used to tell me to stand up and fight. But for what? I don’t know. It sounds silly when I say it out loud…”

“Believe me, Elsa, this little girl will love you as no one ever has … and make you crazy and try your soul. Often all at the same time.”

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.… 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. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Elsa grieved daily for the loss of that closeness with her firstborn. At first she’d tried to scale the walls of her daughter’s adolescent, irrational anger; she’d volleyed back with words of love, but Loreda’s continuing, thriving impatience with Elsa had done worse than grind her down. It had resurrected all the insecurities of childhood.

She hardly got to spend any time with him lately and she loved him more than anything in the world, he who made her feel like a special girl with a big future. He’d taught her to dream. He was the opposite of her dour, workhorse mom, who just plodded forward, doing chores, never having any fun. They even looked alike, she and her daddy.

“Sure, Lolo. How could I forget? You and I will see the world someday. We will stand at the top of the Empire State Building or attend a movie premiere on Hollywood Boulevard.

“Don’t you care that Daddy is unhappy?” “Life is tough, Loreda. You need to be tougher or it will turn you inside out, as it has your father.”

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

“Sì. And you see how right I was?” “About part of it, I guess. She certainly breaks my heart.” “Yes. I was a trial to my poor mamma, too. The love, it comes in the beginning of her life and at the end of yours. God is cruel that way. Your heart, is it too broken to love?” “Of course not.” “So, you go on.” She shrugged, as if to say, Motherhood. “What choice is there for us?” “It just … hurts.”

Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us.

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.

“I don’t know if I want her to settle down, Rose. I’m in awe of her fire. Even if I’m the one who gets burned. I just … want her to be happy. It breaks my heart to see her as unhappy as her father was.”

stood. “I’ll say to you what I should have had the courage to say to your father: I love this land. I love this family. This is home. I want you to grow up here, knowing that this is your place, your future.” “But it’s dying, Mom. And it will kill us where we stand.”

Do you know how beautiful you are? She had never forgotten him saying those remarkable words, and now, he’d claimed to be unbalanced by her. Certainly, she was equally undone by him.

Relief came in waves; she felt ethereal, bodiless, at one with the air in the room. Floating.

“You see now,” Jack said. “A fight like this isn’t romantic. I was in San Francisco when the National Guard went after strikers with bayonets.” “People died that day,” Natalia said. “Strikers. They called it Bloody Thursday.”