In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan's National Book Award - winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding...

Ella Barron runs her Texas boarding house with the efficiency of a ship's captain and the grace of a gentlewoman. But when a room in her boarding house opens up and the respected town doctor, Dr. Kincaid, brings Ella a new boarder-the handsome and gallant Mr. David Rainwater-Ella is immediately resistant to opening up her home to this mysterious stranger. Soon, this strong-minded, independent woman will realize that the living that she has eked out...

Describes the plight of the migrant workers who traveled from the Dust Bowl to California during the Depression and were forced to live in a federal labor camp and discusses the school that was built for their children.

In 1933, when twelve-year-old Hallie Turner and her brothers, Tom and Benny, take to the road seeking whatever work they can get, they find kindness in small-town Kansas.