The Worst Hard Time
I don’t know how we missed this Timothy Egan book in 2006 when it was first published, but after starting it last night, we’re hooked. The Worst Hard Time is the epic story of the dust storms that terrorized America’s High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression and the families who stayed and survived the choking dust of our nation’s greatest natural disaster, the “dirty thirties”. From the Introduction:
On those days when the wind stops blowing across the face of the southern plains, the land falls into a silence that scares people in the way that a big house can haunt after the lights go out and no one else is there. It scares them because the land is too much, too empty, claustrophobic in its immensity. It scares them because they feel lost, with nothing to cling to, disoriented. Not a tree, anywhere. Not a slice of shade. Not a river dancing away, life in its blood. Not a bump of high ground to break the horizon, give some perspective, spell the monotone of flatness. It scares them because they wonder what is next. It scared Coronado, looking for cities of gold in 1541. It scared the Anglo traders who cut a trail from Independence to Santa Fe, after they dared let go of the lifeline of the Cimarron River in hopes of shaving a few days off a seven-week trek. It even scared some of the Comanche as they chased bison over the grass. It scared the Germans from Russia and the Scots-Irish from Alabama — the Last Chancers, exiled twice over, looking to build a hovel from overturned sod, even if that dirt house was crawling with centipedes and snakes, and leaked mud on the children when thunderheads broke.
It still scares people driving cars named Expedition and Outlander. It scares them because of the forced intimacy with a place that gives nothing back to a stranger…
History, delivered as though in a novel you don’t want to put down. I find myself stopping to re-read paragraphs, to draw in a melodic phrase or colorful description, marveling at the perfect choice of words and hoping to remember how they were woven, all the while discovering how little I really knew about this part of our history and the very real people who lived it.
I don’t usually recommend a book before finishing it, but this may well be the exception.
Doug
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Reader Comments (13)
I read it last year. It is an excellent book. I know you will enjoy it.
I'm reading "The Worst Hard Time" now as well. The book really brings to life something I'd heard of but never thought that much about. It's really amazing that people lived with dust like this for years.
That book moved me to tears. It's incredible to learn in detail just how tough some folks had it.
I live in Canyon, just south of Amarillo, and work in Amarillo. The wind still blows pretty hard around here, and every so often we get dust to go with it (though not as bad as it was then).
As a side note, most of the trees here grow leaning toward the north, due in part to the prevailing winds from the south and southwest.
Moving didn't do people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas much good during the depression. Many went out to California, used up all their resources, found nothing and went back on foot to "die amongst their own". If I had to uproot, go somewhere else with just what I could pack in my car, I don't know how I'd make a living or where I would live. Maybe it's just my age, but the older you get, the harder it is to contemplate something of that nature.
I listened to that book in audiobook format and I found it fascinating. The whole time I listened to it I wondered how many people today would have the will and ability to survive a similar disaster.
Let's hope we are never put to a similar test, but based on what's been happening, I am afraid we might well be.
I found the book very interesting though it drags in the middle and doesn’t have much of an ending. Its still worth a read.
I just finished "The Worst Hard Time" about the dust bowl of the 1930s. Some of what the author describes applies to Iraq. We get various colors of dust and it is almost impossible to get away from it.
When I was young, my family would drive between Albuquerque and the Midwest every few years, through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and across Kansas. As I recall, that area had a second Dust Bowl in the early 1950s. Sounds like a book I need to read.
I had been aware of this great man-made disaster from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I picked up this book the other day because I had been thinking lately of humankind’s assault on Mother Earth. Should be a good read.
There are many books written about this time in American history but none that delve into WHY the dust bowl really happened, and how things turned around.
I'm originally from the former dust belt area, and I had no idea how the dust bowl really came to be or that FDR played a role in ending it. It's a fascinating story that was told in a very heartfelt and smart way by author Egan. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.
I read this book a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it also. I heartily recommend it.
Most of us have some vague knowledge of the dust bowl of the 1930's, but this is a work that brings it home with an unmatched power and vividness. It should be required reading for every American.