Not limited

Elsa Martinelli, the main character in Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds is very much like the Ma depicted in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. She too is courageous, fierce, stubborn. Hannah ventures to explore one dimension that Steinbeck didn’t touch: she gives us a childhood that may have created the wonderful Elsa. Yet knowing her (sad) origins may mean we freeze her too soon. We then miss her boldness as emerging during the Dust Bowl, as a surprise, even to herself.