The Four Winds | Kristin Hannah | Published 2021 | *SPOILERS*
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.
In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli - like so many of her neighbors - must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras - The Great Depression.
Elsa Walcott is a fairly well-to do young lady, in a good family, living near the Texas Panhandle. Already 25 years old, she is considered a spinster despite her young age. But the year is in the 1920s, and typically women would have become married and mothers by that age.
On a whim, she meets Rafe Martinelli, a young 18-year-old Italian boy whose parents emmigrated to the United States to give Rafe a better life. But, the two of them begin a whirlwind love affair, and Elsa becomes pregnant with Rafe’s child. The day before he was meant to leave for college and a new life, Elsa’s father drops her off on the Martinelli farm and tells Rafe’s parents, Rose and Tony, that Elsa is their problem now.
Despite their better judgement, they welcome Elsa in and 9 months later, Elsa welcomes a daughter, whom she names Loreda. The story then fast forwards 13 years later. Elsa is still married to Rafe, living on the family farm. Elsa is 12 years old, and they have a son named Anthony, they call him Ant. There was a third son, who was stillborn and is buried in the family cemetery beside Rose and Tony’s three deceased children, all girls.
Rafe is still a dreamer, also putting these thoughts into Loreda’s head. Loreda and Elsa don’t get along, like many teenage girls with their mothers. Elsa is a no-nonsense woman now, but despite all of that, her love for her family is fierce. But, soon, Texas is hit with a massive drought, and their land begins to die around them. Rafe can’t take anymore of this, even though Elsa was going to agree to leave for California in search of a new life, but after spending the night drinking, Rafe left in the middle of the night without word of where he was going or when he’d be back.
Along with the drought, the family begins having to deal with the dust storms, effectively living right in the middle of the dust bowl. When Ant becomes sick with what they’ve dubbed dust pneumonia, Elsa knows that in order to save her children, she will have to move on. On Black Sunday, the day that a massive dust storm blew into the town, blowing black topsoil all over the towns and across states, even as far as Washington, DC., Elsa knows the time is now.
Grabbing Ant from the makeshift hospital in town, the three of them begin moving toward a better life in California. Taking with them as much as they can, they enter over the border of California, and see lush green all around them for the first time in years. Unfortunately, Californians are not as welcoming as Elsa thought. They find a migrant worker camp, and settle in and despite wanting to move on, it is the only place they can afford.
They find as much work as they can, even Loreda having to take off school during the cotton picking season in order to help make money. But when a massive storm causes flooding in the camp, they are saved by communist volunteers and taken to a hotel in order to stay. On advice from Jack, the leader of the communist party near them, they go to the Welty worker camp, and are offered a cabin to stay in, for $6 rent per month.
Elsa, grateful for the opportunity to be given work first since she lives in the camp, realizes that the owner is allowing them to live on credit only, not accepting any cash and won’t allow the Martinelli’s to follow the crops across the state in search for work as they would have to give up their shelter.
Elsa is massively in debt with the owner of the camp, but when cotton picking season begins, they are given work, though they begin working well under minimum wage. Elsa begins working with Jack, whom she also has fallen in love with, and the family begins fighting for fair wages for the workers, and they begin using their right to peaceful protests, though this ultimately leads to Elsa being shot after trying to step up for the workers.
Though the hopsital in town refuses to work on the immigrants, Jack tells the nurse that she needs a doctor now, or there will be trouble. Elsa can feel her body shutting down, as they were unable to remove the bullet. Elsa dies, and Jack takes Ant and Loreda back home to Texas, along with Elsa’s body where she can buried on the land that she loved for so long.
Several years later, Loreda is now 18 years old and returning to California, to go to college as the first Martinelli to do so. She knows that her mother loved her, and though it is hard to be without her, she now is living her life with her mother in mind, who had found her voice too late in life, and that cost her her life.
Discussion Questions
1. “Hope is a coin I carry...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.” What is the significance of the fact that it is an American penny? In what ways does hope anchor us in the moment, and in what ways does it push us forward? Do you or your family have any keepsakes that represent your family’s hope for the future? When the going gets tough, we hold onto hope that everything will work out. For the Martinelli’s, it was a coin that gave them the hope. For others, it is something else that they hold onto, whatever brings them the comfort they need in order to move forward.
2. “But we women of the Great Plains worked from sunup to sundown, too, toiled on wheat farms until wew ere as dry and baked as the land we loved.” The stories of women have largely gone undocumented throughout history, and this era is no different. It is changing, slowly, and women’s courage and determination and victories are being brought to light. How are women’s stories different? Why do you think they’ve gone unreported for so long? Do you think sharing these stories will make a difference to future generations? It’s true that despite working just as long and just as hard as men, women were not recognized as being particularly hard workers during this time, and even today. Women were too afraid to step up for themselves during this time, as is evident in Elsa’s character - she was beaten down too much over her entire existence in the world that she couldn’t stand up for the things she truly believed in.
3. Life was very different for unmarried young women in earlier generations. Expectations for their future were sharply defined. How is Elsa shaped by these expectations and her failure to meet them? Do you think it would have been the same for her in New York City? Did you feel compressed by expectation when you were growing up? Do you think these societal mores were designed to keep women “in their place”? How difficult is it to defy both family and society in a small town? I firmly believe that there is someone out there for everyone, and this is true for Elsa. Elsa was beaten down by her family, and then by her husband 30+ years, that Elsa didn’t realize that she was an attractive person. Other people saw it all the time, but she never truly believed in what they saw. Would her life have been different elsewhere? Absolutely. New York City was the city of dreams for many people, even back then.
4. “She’d wished she’d never read The Age of Innocence. What good came from all this unexpressed longing? She would never fall in love, never have a child of her own.” Literature is, quite honestly, the opening of a door. Through that door, Elsa saw whole other lives, other futures. What books influenced you when you were growing up? Did any novel and/or character change your perception of either yourself or the world? Did you identify with Elsa and her journey throughout this book? In what way? I don’t think any books truly changed me in ways that The Age of Innocence changed Elsa. However, the majority of Kristin Hannah’s books have given me a new perspective, as most of them have a female character that does’t believe in her own self worth, and I don’t believe in mine a lot of the time.
5. “She had to believe there was grit in her, even if it had never been tested or revealed.” This sentence highlights Elsa’s essentially hopeful nature, even though she doesn’t believe in herself. Her family and her world have pared her down to inconsequence. Does this idea resonate with you? Have you seen it at work in other people? In yourself? I have seen it - I have seen people overcome some of the worst situations you can imagine.
6. In 1920s America, there was significant prejudice against Italians; we see that prejudice in Elsa’s own family. What does Rafe represent to Elsa on the night they meet? Is it simply sex and loneliness? Or do you think there’s something deeper involved? Another small defiance against her parents’ small-mindedness? What does it say about Elsa that she went with Rafe so willingly? I think in the beginning, Elsa was simply attracted to the attention that Rafe was giving her. I think it was the same for Rafe. Italians weren’t widely accepted, and though he had another woman on the back burner, Elsa was the first woman he had been with, as was Rafe the first man for her. But, she was able to grow to love Rafe, but I also think it had to do with her own insecurities. She settled for Rafe in the long run when she didn’t need to.
7. “My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family. We plant, we tend, we harvest. I make wine from grape cuttings that I brought here from Sicily, and the wine I make reminds me of my family. It binds us, one to another, as it has for generations. Now it will bind you to us.” How are people connected to the land that they occupy? What about the land they farm? Describe that unique and complicated connection. Land is something that many of the settlers coming to America have - it is the first thing that they would purchase, and from there, they built their lives around the land they occupy.
8. Motherhood changes Elsa in almost every way. What does she learn by becoming a mother? What does she learn about motherhood from Rose? How does motherhood strengthen a women? How does it weaken her? How does Elsa remain “herself” after giving birth? How does she change? That she has a love for her daughter coming from her that she has never once experienced before. Elsa loves her children deeply, without condition, unlike her own family. Rose ultimately became the mother that she never had, but truly deserved in her life.
9. Few things can break a woman’s heart like motherhood. “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 adolescence, irrtational 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.” If you’re a parent, did this passage resonate with you? Why? Absolutely. Motherhood challenges every ounce of patience you have in your body, and for me, that wasn’t a whole lot to begin with. I love my children wholeheartedly, and again without conditions. I would do anything for them, including laying my life on the line in order to save theirs. There is nothing I wouldn’t do. But, I am the other to two girls - my oldest is 6 and my youngest is 2. My 6 year old fully believes that she is a grown woman, and she tests me daily. We are still learning and growing together, because I do not have this motherhood thing figured out. Her challenging boundaries has ground me down so much that sometimes I act out at her without intending to. I would never lay a hand on my child, though, so I use my words which I think is almost worst.
10. The adolescent years can be especially difficult on mothers and daughters. Did you dislike Loreda during these years? Did you understrand her? I don’t dislike Loreda. She is a child, and believes that she knows everything there is to know about life when she does not. Loreda was learning, just like everyone else. Her father is partially to blame for the life that Loreda was living, the dreaming she was doing.
11. “Tony and Rose were the kind of people who expected life to be hard and had become tougher to survive...They might have come off the coat as Anthony and Rosalba, but hard work and the land had turned them into Tony and Rose. Americans. They would die of thirst and hunger before they’d give it up.” Do you think this attitude is a common thread in those who across generations have come to chase the “America Dream?” Why is land so important to that dream? How does one “become American”? Learning the American way was how you became American. For many immigrants during that time, many of them changed their last names to something more American sounding, as it gave them better chances in order to thrive in the country.
12. There is a strong thread running through this novel about man’s connection to the land. During the Dust Bowl, while many families went west in search of work and a better life, most of them stayed behind on their parched farms. Why do you think that is? They believed that things would get better. They spent years loving the land, working on the land, and I understand it being difficult to give it up. It was something they worked hard for, that they earned through that hard work, that nobody wants to truly give it up.
13. What bonds Loreda and her father? What dreams do they share? Do they intend to exclude Elsa, whom they perceive as just a workhorse? Or is she partially to blame for her being ostracized? How does her lack of self-esteem color her relationships with her husband and eldest child? Loreda and Rafe were both dreamers. Rafe never wanted a life on the farm, and his indiscretions with Elsa kept him from moving on.
14. What do you think about Rafe? Was he as trapped by his family’s expectations as Elsa had been by her own? Did you expect him to leave? I didn’t expect him to leave. His parents made sure that he stuck by Elsa after what happened, and ensured that they took Elsa in as their own. But I do think he was as trapped by his parents hopes and dreams for him, as Elsa was by her own families, just in different ways.
15. How would you describe the Texas landscape the author paints? With its dust storms and earth dry and zigzag cracked, is it like any you’ve known? I’ve only been to one part of Texas, which was El Paso. It was sticky hot and unpleasant when I went. It was mountainous, but not in the lush green moutnains you would think. It was truly a desert, so that was what I had imagined when I thought of the area they lived in, which was roughly abot 6 hours away.
16. “Even if they didn’t speak of their love, or share their feelings in long, heartfelt conversations, the bond was there. Sturdy. They’d sewn their lives together in the silent way of women unused to conversation. Day after day, they worked together, prayed together, held their growing family together through the hardships of farm life.” Do you share a similar bond with the women in your life - either as a mother, a daughter, or a daughter-in-law? With your friends? Why do you think female bonding is so important to women? I think at one time I did, but unfortunately, I don’t really have any true ties to any women in my life. Of course, I do have my mother, grandmother and my older sister. Yes, I’m tied to them, and I’d do anything for them. So, in a sense, yes I do with them. But with friends? After having children, a lot of my friends stopped inviting me to do things because I wasn’t as available as I was prior to having children, so I’ve grown used to just being around the family I was born into, and the family that I created.
17. Why does Rafe leave and what is he chasing out west? Do you have sympathy for how broken he felt by the poverty and hardship? Should Elsa have agreed to go with him? How does Elsa aim to fill his void, and why does she believe she loves him even after the abandonment? I do feel like he felt that there was nothing he could do, other than to move on. Rafe was a wayward man, stuck in a place for far too long. However, I don’t have sympathy for him as a man abandoning his family when everyone was struggling, not just him.
18. Why does the Martinelli family stay under such brutal conditions - the heat, the dust storms, the lack of food, and the dying livestock? Does it reveal anything about the grit that literally fills their bodies? What choices do they have, and what might you have done during the drought? Were you surprised that Elsa set off without her in-laws? Would you have had the courage to do the same? They held onto hope.
19. How have the Dust Bowl and “going west” been treated by the American imagination? What has been glamorized, and what grittiness has been leftout or effectively captured? Elsa compares them to the early pioneers in their covered wagons. Is that an accurate comparison? California was considered the land of milk and honey, and the government in California wanted people to come there to work, but they didn’t expect ALL of the migrant workers that they got, thousands of people per day.
20. Life in California is not at all what the migrants expected, what advertisements had led them to believe. The locals treat them badly, are afraid of them. Why is that? How does the treatment of migrants in California during the Great Depression mirror the treatment of immigrants today? How is the same? How is it different? Because California is filled with terrible people, even now. It was already a well-off state, so anyone who came from anything less than them were dirty, diseased, etc.
21. How do Elsa and her family remain unbroken even while enduring crippling poverty, food and shelter insecurity, and living in a town that is hostile to them? Would they have fared better in Texas? Unbroken? That family was so broken the entire time they were in California. Elsa had to worry about feeding her family, giving them shelter and then eventually finding herself in debt thanks to the Welty farm.
22. What do Jack and the Communist union organizers offer the migrant workers, and Loreda in particular? Why is it a risk to associate with them and what is Elsa’s hesitation? They gave Loreda the hope that she had been holding onto since her father put it into her head. Jack represented the need that there should be a better life for the people that came into the state to work, to give to their families. They believed in the real American dream, and got others to believe in it as well.
23. In the 1930s, communism and socialism were on the rise, partially in response to the grinding poverty, joblessness, and despair. The Communists claimed that “communism is the new Americanism”. Can you understand why people believed in that? What do we know now that people didn’t know then? How do you think these perceptions have changed over time. Absolutely. Everything about the party was about giving hope to other people.
24. Discuss the shift in thinking that happens between generations - the freedoms longed for and the sacrifices require. The Great Generation was shaped by the Great Depression and World War II. They willingly sacrificed for each other and did what they could to help. How is the modern world different? How do we face our own dark times? Everyone is all about themselves nowadays. The generation I just read about is absoltuely the greatest generation there ever was. Although, we are also living in a time when poverty is high - the cost of living, groceries and everything is so high now that many people are finding themselves homeless.
25. How does the Great Depression setting of The Four Winds compare to America during the pandemic? What lessons of resilience and healing might be embedded in this story? How might others’ struggles inspire us? Do you have any family stories from the Depression? My grandmother was born at the tailend of the Depression, in 1938, so there isn’t any stories. If there were, it would come from people who have been long gone. My grandmother, at this point, is the oldest living member of her family, as her parents and her siblings have been deceased for several years now.
26. They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. During the COVID-19, Americans were faced with many of the same challenges of the Great Depression. Did we learn from previous generations? What differences can you see in the two difficult times? What similarities? How do you think future generations will judge the America of today? Absolutely not. Nobody quite understands the hardships. There is a divide of people who believe the pandemic was created by the government to deal with the massive population, while others became hermits because they believed the pandemic was the end of times. I think this is the same.
27. “Courage is fear you ignore.” Discuss this. How do Elsa’s and Loreda’s actions embody this idea? Fighting for any kind of social equality or radical change often requires great personal sacrifice. Courage and fear are absolutely one in the same. It is possible to be courgeous and fearsome at the same time.
28. Fighting for any kind of social equality or radical change often requires great personal sacrifice. How does Elsa represent the courage it takes to stand up and make trouble and be counted? Elsa knew how dangerous it would be when she decided to stand up for her people. And she paid the price with her life in the end.
29. Why was it so important for Loreda to get her mother back to Texas, even if at such a high cost? How did she finally come to understand her mother and her choices through a new lens? Texas was home, in a way that California never would have been. It was where the people who truly loved her awaited their eventual return, and though life was hard there, life was worse in California, and she wanted her children to go back to the family.
30. Did you find the end of Elsa’s and her family’s journey satisfying? Where do you think Ant and Loreda ended up? How do you see Loreda’s life being like her mother’s? How will it be different? I didn’t find Elsa’s end satisfying. She deserved to live, to use the voice that she found too late, especially after everything she went through with Rafe. We never did find out what happened to him, and I would love a small follow-up story on him to find out what he was up to while his wife and children struggled. In the end, I hope he never made it to California, or anywhere out West and struggled in his own life and paid for what he had done. But, Elsa’s death I think was necessary for Loreda to see exactly what Elsa spent years fighting for. She wanted Loreda to have the life that she never got to have. And in the end, I think she will. She was returning to California, to the land of promise, in order to create that new life for herself.
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