Out of the Dust
by Karen Hesse
Billie Jo is living through some of the worst years of Oklahoma history. The time is 1934, and the Depression has hit hard. Farms have overproduced during the boom years following the Great War, and now there is little topsoil left to cultivate. Billie Jo and her family try to grow wheat, but their yield is less and less each year.

Then Billie Jo loses her mother, who dies in childbirth, and the responsibility falls even harder on her shoulders. This is the story of one girl's fight against the elements, and against conventional wisdom; the story of the breakdown and rebuilding of a family; and a story that stands as a testament to all the American farmers who battled through the Depression.

Excerpt:
I never would have gone to see the show
if I had known a storm like this would come.
I didn’t know when going in,
but coming out
a darker night I’d never seen.
I bumped into a box beside the Palace door
and scraped my shins,
then tripped on something in my path,
I don’t know what,
and walked into a phone pole,
bruised my cheek.



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