Memories Of The Dust Bowl

The story of one of the bleakest episodes in the history of our country – created by a “perfect storm” of ecological and economic events – became a page turner in the hands of author/journalist Timothy Egan. The speaker at the January meeting of the Indian River Literary Society took the Great American Dust Bowl and wrote it from the point of view of those who stayed behind rather than the so-called “Okies” who fled to California. In the process, he won the National Book Award for The Worst Hard Time.

Egan was working on a series for The New York Times on the collapse of small towns in America when he found himself among people still living in what was left of the towns ravaged by the horrendous dust storms of the 1930s. This became the real basis of his book – a story of survival for people so emotionally attached to a time and place that it drew him in and eventually his readers, as well.

Read the entire article in the April 2008 issue