The Worst Hard Time

Author: Timothy Egan
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006
Pages: 352
My Rating: Highly Recommend

The Worst Hard Time is "the untold story of those who survived the Great American Dust Bowl".

Synopsis (book jacket): The dust storms that terrorized American's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod huts to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

Review: Incredibly fascinating, riveting, and well-written. This is the most moving book I've read in a long time. It's amazing how much people have to endure and how much the human spirit can endure.

The Depression left people in a state of despair never experienced before, but for those living on the Plains, the additional scourge of the Dust Bowl provided a double whammy. Egan weaves true stories and personal accounts into a basic retelling of why and how the Dust Bowl happened in the first place. The characters in this novel become very real to the reader and it is impossible to not empathize and feel for them.

Egan also addresses the politics of the time and how they contributed to the plight of those living on the Plains. He takes a hard stance and it’s not all that difficult to see how politics can alter the course of individual lives for years. Egan may be discussing a phenomenon in the 1930s (which in reality were not that long ago), but the lesson to be learned is still relevant today.