Central Kansas Library System

For almost a decade, a devastating combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland. Ceaseless "black blizzards," turned night into day, killed crops and livestock, threatened the lives of small children, and buried homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt. The authors tell the story through private letters, newspaper accounts, and vivid interviews conducted with dozens of survivors...

In a time of drought and economic depression in 1934, Ella Barron runs her boardinghouse in Texas while caring for her son, Solly, and responds to the calm influence of one of her boarders, David Rainwater, while facing the tension and uncertainty around her.

"On October 29, 1929, life in the United States took a turn for the worst. The stock market the system that controls money in America plunged to a record low. But this event was only the beginning of many bad years to come. By the early 1930s, one out of three people was not working. People lost their jobs, their houses, or both and ended up in shantytowns called Hoovervilles named for the president at the time of the crash. By 1933, many banks had...