THE FOUR WINDS by Kristin Hannah

I am not a Kristin Hannah fan, but I admit that I did like this book more than I liked The Nightingale.  Her writing style, or lack thereof, just did not get on my nerves as much here, possibly because the setting is so bleak; lush prose would just not be appropriate.  Elsa is a young Texas woman in the early 1920s whose parents treat her like garbage because she is twenty-five and unmarried.  Then she finds herself in the family way and is obligated to marry the child’s 18-year-old father, Rafe Martinelli.  Her pregnancy further alienates her from her own family, but the upside is that the Martinelli family welcomes her and her daughter wholeheartedly.  At first, this seems to be just another novel about a man who drinks all the money away.  Fast-forward a decade or so, and Rafe has not matured one iota, but the Great Depression has arrived, and the Texas panhandle is beset by devastating dust storms.  The bulk of the pages recount the trials and tribulations of Elsa and her children in California where migrants are shunned and mistreated as they try to build a new life under impossible circumstances.  My favorite scene is one in which Elsa attends a snooty PTA meeting; what she does and says just before exiting the building is priceless.  However, the vast majority of this novel is crushingly depressing, and the ending is melodramatic and tear-inducing.  Other reader-reviewers have complained that the novel is too political.  Really??  What is political about helping people rise up from squalor during difficult times?