Before she departs, Rose and Tony announce they won't be going. The doctor says he must leave to survive, so Elsa packs up the household into the car. After a week-long dust storm, Ant is severely ill due to inhalation of dust. As the drought continues, their animals die and supplies run out. One day, Rafe abandons them with only a note. Loreda longs to leave as well, and she prefers her father's dreams to her mother's dreary, joyless work ethic. Rafe is unhappy, drinks heavily and dreams of going West to pursue new opportunities. The past few years have been difficult, with the Great Depression, an on-going drought and frequent dust storms ravaging the lands.
Elsa and Rafe now also have a son, Anthony ("Ant"), 7. Over time, Elsa finds her place on the Martinelli farm, and the baby (name Loreda) is born.īy 1934, Loreda is 12 and has a difficult relationship with her mother. Rafe dreams of leaving for the big city, but does his duty. When Elsa gets pregnant, her father disowns her, and Rafe's parents ( Tony and Rose) tell him to marry Elsa.
Instead, she meets and sleeps with Rafe Martinelli. She feels restless and destined for spinsterhood. In 1921, Elsa Wolcott is a 25-year-old unmarried woman who is not particularly pretty and too tall for most men. The Four Winds is divided up into four sections, each detailing events from (roughly) that year. At 18, Loreda prepares to return to California to go to college.) Her daughter, Loreda, returns home to Texas. Elsa falls in love with a union organizer and helps to organize a strike against their bosses, but gets shot by the farm boss. When she's finally able to leave with her kids, they become migrant workers in California - which she quickly realizes is an exploitative system. She becomes a farmer with her husband's family, though he leaves them, and they struggle with the unending drought. (The one-paragraph version: During the Dust Bowl in the Texas Panhandle, Elsa Wolcott is a woman who dreams of going to college, but gets pregnant instead and has two kids.
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