The Four Winds

 Fiction by Kristin Hannah

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This a very good story, set in the Dust Bowl era, which is a terribly depressing time. In high school I read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and I'd say this was a better book, but I don't know if my English teacher would agree.

The family in this book lives on a farm in Texas that was incredibly prosperous in the 1920's and then goes sharply downhill in the 1930's. As neighbors lose their homes to the bank and set out for "better lives" in California, I was hoping against hope that this family would resist that idea. With our historical hindsight, we know that California was a bad bad idea, but of course, the characters in the story don't know that, and they were starving and trying to grasp at any kind of hope.

It's not a happy story, but still a good one.

I also read recently by this author: The Great Alone