The Four Winds

 The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah 454 pages (read a galley - book will be published 2/2021)  

Summary from Goodreads: 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.

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Hannah does an absolutely fantastic job of bringing to life the human experience of the Dust Bowl. You can read books about it (Timothy Egan's is the best one I've read) and you can watch films, but I think the human experience is what really makes this disaster very, very real. Hannah brings together accurate historic details about not only what life was like for families on the plain before the Dust Bowl, but what it was like for people who tried to tough it out, and also for those who left. Leaving your home and trying to find work in places like California was a huge risk that often didn't pay off. It's easy to remember that fellow Americans not only took advantage of the "Okies," people fleeing the Dust Bowl, but also didn't let them have access to basic things like housing, medical care, etc.  I appreciated that Hannah didn't flinch from some of these very ugly details (and also appreciated that there is hope here for the characters). This was an absolutely horrendous time in American history that had a long-lasting impact not only in the affected areas of the Dust Bowl, but beyond into our economy and labor practices. 

If you are interested in more about The Dust Bowl, I recommend Timothy Egan's book The Worst Hard Time and there is also a film about The Dust Bowl which is quite good. Another historical fiction book tied into the Dust Bowl is Mary Coin, which imagines the life of the woman depicted in the famous photo Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange.