Finished: The Four Winds (Hannah) The story of how a farming family in the panhandle of Texas battles to make it through the Dust Bowl years of the early 1930's. Elsa Wolcott is a 25 year old, well-to-do, oldest daughter of parents who feel that she'll never have a future as a wife and mother. Unmarried at her age, they've given up on her. To finally stand up for herself, Elsa sleeps with the first young man who shows and interest in her and become pregnant. Her family disowns her, drives her to the Martinelli farm, and dumps her on their doorstep to be married. It takes awhile, but the Martinelli matriarch, Rose, finally comes to love and respect Elsa. While the farm is a thriving wheat producer, the family is happy and doing well. Elsa and her husband, Rafe, have two children, Loreda and Anthony. Rafe is never really happy, though, as he had been planning to go to college and see the world before he was forced into marriage and to stay on the farm with this parents and new wife. When the first year of the  Dust Bowl hits and devastates all the farm crops with its lack of rain and winds of dust storms, the destruction is more than Rafe can handle and he leaves his wife and children to head to California. His parents, Elsa and the children are all devastated. They remain on the farm, with Rose and her husband, Tony, refusing to leave the land, and Elsa right there with them, having come to love the land as her own, as much as her new Martinelli parents. They suffer unthinkable hardship in the next couple of years, but when 7 year old Anthony falls very ill and nearly dies from dust pneumonia, the doctor advises Elsa to get him to a climate where he can breathe more easily after he recovers enough to travel. This is when the true heartbreaking adventure begins. Tony and Rose still refuse to leave their land, so Elsa sets off in the old jalopy of a truck with her two children, very little money, very little food and very few belongings to cross the country to find a better life for her children in California. Little does she know she's heading into even worse conditions. People fleeing the Dust Bowl disaster and arriving from Texas, Oklahoma and other states were unwelcome and disdained by most native Californians. They were allowed to live nowhere but in makeshift tent cities. They begged for whatever work they could get, mostly surviving by picking cotton during cotton season. The migrant children, if they attended school, were ostracized by the other children. Medical care was denied. People were starving and dying. Elsa barely squeaked by with Loreda and Anthony, until the straw the broke the camel's back finally descended upon them...a terrible flood in the tent city that washed away all of their belongings and money except for the truck, which they were barely able to save (along with their own lives). By this time they have met "communist" union organizer, Jack, who Elsa has steered them very clear of. She wants no part of organizing against the rich landowners who are paying her barely enough to survive as a cotton picker. As conditions continue to deteriorate, as the cowardly landowners produce less cotton, and therefore pay the migrants even less, Elsa finally falls into step with Jack and realizes the only way to fight the injustice is to speak up and protest. Elsa and Jack realize they are in love, and for the first time in her life, Elsa is told that she's beautiful and strong and desired. The migrants, led by Jack and Elsa, are on the verge of having a successful second day of striking by sitting down in all the cotton fields in the area when Elsa is shot by one of the landowner's security guards. She passes away able to tell her children and Jack how she feels about them and vice versa. It's such a tragic moment. :-( Her last words to Jack are begging him to take her children back to Tony and Rosa in Texas, and he does. The book closes four years later when Loreda, now 18, is about to be the first Martinelli to head off to college. The farm has survived the Dust Bowl years and is a thriving wheat supplier again. Loreda says goodbye to her mom at the family cemetery and turns to follow the dreams her mom always wanted her to follow. A very good book, but wow did it smack me in the face with timeliness as I couldn't help but think about all the children at the borders who have been torn from their parents...people fleeing horrible situations, looking for a better life for this families.