Out of the Dust
1997
- fiction
- juvenile fiction
- depressions
- poetry
- farm life
- dust storms
- oklahoma in fiction
- dust storms in fiction
- poetry in fiction
- farm life in fiction
The story
"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. While others flee from the dust bowl, Billie Jo is left to find peace in the bleak landscape of Oklahoma -- and in the surprising landscape of her own heart. This Newbery Award winning book relates the hardships of the Depression in a series of poems.
What it’s like
Spare free-verse poems on the page, short lines and wide white space, with the prose texture of a diary kept by a sixteen-year-old girl in a flat, bleached Oklahoma. The sensory world is built from grit: dust sifting through window cracks, sheets of brown air rolling over fields, the taste of grit in bread, the smell of scorched wheat, and a quiet ache for sound when the piano is silent. The vibe is restrained melancholy with a stubborn undercurrent of hope, the kind of book that suits a grey, wind-heavy afternoon, a slow read on a porch, or a quiet hour alone with a cup of something warm. Pacing is brisk because each poem is short, yet the emotional rhythm is slow and bruised, following a grieving girl who withdraws, then slowly and painfully reopens to her father and to the land. Intensity is low to moderate: a serious accident and its aftermath are described with restraint, with grief, hunger, and a fire that lands as a single stark moment rather than lingering gore. It is for readers who want a gentle, sorrowful coming-of-age story told in lyric fragments, especially those drawn to Depression-era landscapes and quiet, interior resilience.
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