Kristin Hannah

Fiction 2021 | 464 pages

What I knew about The Dust Bowl could have filled a very small thimble.  This novel graphically teaches us an important piece of history about the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the mistreatment of US residents who went west to find work after their farms and ranches were destroyed by drought.  Hannah’s characters are gripping, rich, and deep.  Her ability to tell a tale is astounding.  We follow the life of Elsa and her two children, Loreda and Ant, thrust into unimaginable poverty and the desperate struggle to survive.  We witness the physical, emotional, financial, and familial devastation of the Dust Bowl. And we are viscerally educated about the rise of the farm-workers’ rights movement in the west.  I highly recommend.  This is a good summer read that is hard to put down.

July 2021