The Great Depression in America. Millions lost their jobs, and the Great Plains withered under years of drought and destructive dust storms. “The Dust Bowl”—that’s what they called the darkest period of that time. Farmers could barely hold on at the edge of survival, fighting for what little remained of the harvest and water—who else remembers what rain looks like? We meet Elsa several years before these terrible events, on the eve of her birthday. Lonely and like a stranger in her own family, for many years she spent her time reading fictional adventures and imagining other lives. Elsa was always considered ugly, and now she’s also old—what a joke, at twenty-five!
Fate prepares many ordeals for Elsa: forced marriage, poverty, homelessness, monstrous natural disasters, exhausting migrant labor, fighting for the lives of her own children… But all of that will only bring to light her untamable strength, incredible resilience, her readiness to make sacrifices, and her refusal to give up. “Four Winds” is an epochal portrait of America in that cruel time and the unvarnished reality behind the American dream. And it’s the story of one unbreakable, courageous woman—full of love, heroism, and hope.