'The four winds' by Kristin Hannah

I had never heard of author Wendell Berry , then he popped up several times within a few days. First in a newsletter, with a quote about the value of community. Then in a sustainability book dated 1980. Then with an opening quote in ‘The Four Winds’ by Kristin Hannah.

‘To damage the earth is to damage your children.’

This quote and the topic of the book - depression and environmental disaster - seemed apt in today’s world full of floods, storms, droughts - severe weather events caused by human disaster.

I never read ‘the grapes of wrath’ by John Steinbeck. The four winds covers the same era, the same heart breaking story. It’s written from a woman’s perspective, and covers topics beyond the misery of drought, loss of farms and homes. It also covers the challenges of being a woman in the 1930s. A woman deemed ugly and unmarriageable by her wealthy family, who only wants to be loved. She falls in love, marries and unexpectedly finds what she’s been looking for - a family, a place of belonging.

The weather - ongoing droughts - threatens all that. As reader i observe the outside world and Elsa’s internal world. We see how her parents’ words that she’s unloveable determine her actions, and achieve the opposite of what she’s dreaming about.

The dust bowl years are nearly a century ago. Yet, the plight of misplaced people who arrive in California, ‘the land of milk and honey’, only to be third class citizens without any rights, is as present today as it was all those years ago. In 2021 48 million people were internally displaced, and 26 million were refugees. Most of these millions experience conditions as harsh, a world as unwelcoming, as described in ‘The Four Winds’.

Maybe as reader it’s more comfortable to think ‘this is all a long time ago, and in America’. Yet it is a timely reminder to consider the plight of too many in every wealthy country.

The writing? The characters are a bit one dimensional; good and bad with few shades. The misery is relentless, but that’s the reality of poverty irrespective of its time. The greed of the wealthy and the absence of workers’ rights are a reality in the wealthy world dependent on migrant labour.

A good read, not an uplifting one.