More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
To damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET
“Elsinore,”
“I want to call her Loreda,” Elsa said. “For my grandfather, who was born in Laredo.” Rose sounded out the unfamiliar name. “Lor-ay-da. Beautiful. Most American,
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
He has a high fever and is suffering from severe silicosis. Dust pneumonia. Prairie dust is full of silica. It builds up in the lungs and tears away the air sacs.”
“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?”
“A warning, though,” Mrs. Quisdorf said quietly. “Words and ideas can be deadly. You be careful what you say and to whom, especially in this town.”
“It’s not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.”
They were Midwesterners or Texans or Southerners, most of them. Proud people who weren’t used to being on the dole.
“It’s all about class struggle, isn’t it? Serfs against landlords throughout history. Marx and Engels are right. If there was only one class, where everyone worked for the good of all, it would be a better world. We wouldn’t have people like the big growers making all the money and people like us doing all the work. We starve while the rich get richer.” “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” Mrs. Quisdorf said, nodding. “That’s the general idea. Who’s to say if it actually works, though.”
Enough is goddamned enough.
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.
