Elsa and Loreda meet an organizer who helps them realize the time has come because “The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land…”Įlsa’s and Loreda’s characters are developed masterfully as they toil together through one heart-wrenching scene after another in a relationship that arcs from unconditional mother-child love to teenage withdrawal, to a common fight for survival and, finally, to the bonding of their convictions. Conditions are hopeless unless the workers, whom Elsa has come to admire, band together. But unscrupulous growers exploit Central Valley workers, wringing labor out of malnourished migrants for meager wages, leaving them impoverished and beholden, scorned by native Californians. Elsa has no choice but to take her two children to California in search of work in the cotton fields and a better life. Life is hard work, but they have fully stocked shelves for over a decade until drought and dust storms ravage the land, when Rafe abandons Elsa and their two children, Loreda and Ant.ĭesperate struggles against nature are portrayed with harrowing images of devastation, dire perils, and death. She ends up pregnant and is taken in to marry Rafe by his kindly immigrant farmer parents. She understands the impossible odds her mother faces and the sheer tenacity it takes to simply keep the family together and put food on the table.During the 1920s, Elsa’s Texas Panhandle family smothers her as a fragile outcast until she rebels to experience life with Rafe, a farmer.
Interestingly, Elsa believes herself a failure as a mother for her inability to pull her family out of poverty, but Loreda’s perspective is quite different. Time and again, when life threatens to overwhelm her, Elsa finds strength in those around her. A solitary child unused to the company of others, Elsa learns the power of having a support network, a lesson reinforced by Jean Dewey and other migrants in the squatters’ camp. Her love of the Martinelli farm-as well as the Martinellis themselves-buttresses her in times of hardship. While Rafe runs away from those responsibilities, Elsa faces them head-on. Unloved by her family, she falls for the sweet words of Rafe, a younger man who woos her but is not ready for the responsibility of fatherhood. A gangly, awkward spinster with no self-confidence, Elsa is forced by her circumstances to find the strength and courage she never knew she had and confront a life marred by seemingly endless tragedy.
Elsa’s character arc follows a well-worn path, although no less engaging for its familiarity.
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