The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

To damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET

She closed the book, feeling more outcast now than when she’d begun. Restless. Unsatisfied. If she didn’t do something soon, something drastic, her future would look no different from her present.

There had to be opportunities out there, but where would she find them? The library. Books held the answer to every question.

Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.

Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination.

“But you did it. You broke away. D’ya ever think life must be bigger than what we see here, Els?”

The small woman was a study in contradictions: she moved with the fast, furtive motions of a bird and looked fragile, but Elsa’s overwhelming impression was of strength. Toughness.

be careful to never move too fast or need too much.

gingham curtains

spoken words had never been her forte and she didn’t have the courage to tell him how she felt anyway, that she’d found an unexpected strength in herself

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

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

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?”

Elsa and Rose combined their individual optimism into a communal hope, stronger and more durable in the combination.

Words were something she could never pull up easily, not for him. She was always afraid of saying the wrong thing, of pushing him away when she wanted to draw him near. He was like Loreda, full of mercurial moods and given to bouts of passion.

“We could leave,” Loreda said to her father, who kept walking as if he hadn’t heard. “Anything is possible.”

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. But it was always there. She knew it was her own fault, somehow, her doing, even though in all her desperate musings for the foundation of it, she’d never been able to see the flaw in herself that had proven to be so defining.

Absence could fill a room to overflowing, apparently.

“I know how much it hurts right now, Elsa. You can’t unlove someone even if you want to, even if he breaks your heart. I understand not wanting to wake up.

“Passion is a thunderstorm, there and gone. It nourishes, sì, but it drowns, too. Our land will save and protect you.

“You blame yourself when they are the ones to blame.” Rose gave her a steady, reassuring look. “Remember, cara, hard times don’t last. Land and family do.”

“Tested does not mean forgotten,”

For the first time in her life, she understood the physical pain of betrayal.

“Hey, you,” she said. “I knew you’d come back.”

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. —CÉSAR CHÁVEZ

whispered, 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.

Time heals all wounds, people told her, underscoring its essential kindness. She knew in fact that some wounds deepened over time instead of lessened; still, she’d relied on time’s constancy. The sun rose and the sun fell every day; in between there were chores and meals and markers, a schedule of daily life.

kidding.” “Education is everything, Loreda. You know that. You will be the first Martinelli to go to college.” “But—” “No buts. Hard times don’t last. Education does and y’all are behind the grind these days. Hurry up. We have a walk ahead of us.”

Elsa heard the message but didn’t care, and not caring felt good.

They ate casseroles made of canned tomato soup and macaroni and chopped-up hot dogs.

Her Clara Bow lips were painted a bright French red.

Her legs were a little shaky, to be honest. In the mirror, she’d seen more than her face. She’d seen the girl she’d been before all of this. A dreamer, a believer. Someone who would go places. How had she forgotten all of that? It gave her a newfound, or refound, hope, but it fed the anger in her, too.

A library. Magic.

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.

All she wanted to do was climb back in bed with her kids and cuddle under the covers and sleep. It was her only escape. But she knew how dangerous escape could be. 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.

Hard times don’t last. Love does.

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.

At that, homesickness gripped her; not the kind for a place, but for people. Her people.