The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough

Imagine yourself to be a sheltered and pampered 18-year-old girl living in Virginia in a snug house surrounded by orchards, flowers, and streams. And then a family death and overwhelming debts force you to move to live with a relative in an unpainted wood-frame shack on a ranch, where the area is suffering its worst-ever drought--no trees, no greenery, no water. And the wind blows all the time. How would you fare?

The year is 1887 and the ranch location is outside Sweetwater, Texas. Letty Mason is not at all prepared for her new environment, particularly not for the weather. Circumstances go from bad to worse as her relative's wife begins to resent Letty's intrusion, and she finds herself almost forced into making a loveless marriage. She begins to think of the constant wind as a demon, and "began to dimly comprehend how women tried beyond endurance might sometimes go mad."

Later in the novel she thinks that the demon winds are trying to destroy her. She thinks, "Hell was a place where the winds blew all the time, winds that tormented you, but would not let you die....Demon winds!...."

This novel is somewhat melodramatic, although historical accounts do tell of pioneering women who did, indeed, go mad. A reader who has not ever lived "where the wind comes sweeping down the plain" may dismiss the heroine's obsession with the wind as illogical. But for anyone who has ever lived in West Texas, it will seem entirely plausible.

The Wind was written in 1925 by a woman who had lived in Sweetwater. It caused great furor at the time from Chambers of Commerce in that area, but today it is acknowledged as a classic of Texas literature.

Recommended for Texans who have ever lived in West Texas, the South Plains, or the Panhandle. Let me ask you, is the wind blowing right now? When was the last time you experienced a bad dust storm? Did you feel as if you might go crazy if it didn't stop?