“The world can be changed by a handful of courageous people. Today we fight on behalf of those who are afraid. We fight for a living wage.” A character named Jack, a union organizer, speaks these words near the end of this poignant novel about the horrible advent of the Dust Bowl and the desperate migration of families to California. And this novel certainly describes the devastating consequences of greedy farm owners exploiting their impoverished workers, and with company stores further driving them into a form of slavery. Can the workers be galvanized into fighting for their rights? The main character however is a woman who was denied love by her horrible birth family and only finds love with her unexpected in-laws and her two children. She works fiercely alongside her in-laws to maintain their land and livestock during relentless years of drought and dust storms. Eventually, this love leads her to abandon her home state of Texas and travel to California, seeking a safer, healthier environment for her two children. The underlying theme for this narrative is the strength of this love that drives her life force and quietly impacts those around her. At times, the narrative is relentlessly sad and grim but it also conveys the power of love that drives people to keep struggling, to venture forth to an unknown future, and to embrace dangerous activities to seek justice for their children and in a larger context for others in similar circumstances. This story also represents a truth for today when the rich get ever richer while many workers struggle to raise families on stagnant minimum wages. Eighty years later, people still struggle to survive in a society weighted toward the wealthy. Words penned by the author stick with me as I bid this novel goodbye. “The Four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream that it will be possible again” A paean to the future.
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