The Worst Hard Time

The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 8 seconds

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan was initially a book I selected from the e-library because nothing else I wanted to read was available. Once I started reading the book, I could not put it down.

Now that we have had the warmest summer since 1936 during the dust bowl, the book has even more meaning.

According to The New York Times,

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.”

With the likelihood of more ecological catastrophes in the immediate future, this is a book I highly recommend.

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The New Earth

Read: April 2023

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The New Earth

by Jess Row

The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!

The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.

In 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.

Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within–blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem).


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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What's Mine and Yours

Read: February 2022

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What’s Mine and Yours

by Naima Coster

What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster is one of the best books I have read in the last few years. At this moment in my life, family means more than ever. This book explores how families can collapse and find ways to reunite. Although my life circumstances are the polar opposite of the protagonists, the book’s central themes resonated with me.

The focus on integration in this Millenium is a subject that needs to be discussed openly and honestly. The racist response of some of the parents is told in a way that clarifies the pain that that can cause.

Even the parents who favor integration have their flaws, which are passed on to their children.

The children, especially Noelle and Gee, oppose their parent’s actions. The sins of their parents are sowed upon them as well.

I have placed this book on my list of novels for reading later this year or n 2023. Its themes are so strong that a second reading is required to engage with its multiple levels fully.

This is a Goodreads summary.

A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the primarily Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the next twenty years.

The debate is Jade, Gee’s steely, ambitious mother, on one side of the integration. In the aftermath of a severe loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he’ll need to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the other side is Noelle’s headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She strives to protect them as she couldn’t protect herself from the influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie.

When Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers-each determined to see her child inherit a better life-will make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.

As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What’s Mine and Yours is an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the foothills of North Carolina to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It explores every family’s unique organism: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.

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Finding Peace, One Piece at a Time

Read: September 2021

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Finding Peace, One Piece at a Time

by Rachel Blythe Kodanaz

Finding Peace, One Piece at a Time by Rachel Blythe Kodanaz is a book I wish I had long before Jan died. It provides helpful information on maintaining an organized lifestyle and handling a loved one’s possessions.

Having lost almost everything I had except for the clothes on my back after a house fire in 1972, I thought I had adopted a view that possessions were not significant. With Jan’s death, the truth is that she and I had collected essential possessions, and now it was my responsibility to decide what to do with them.

Rachel’s book is a practical guide, offering a comprehensive understanding of the significance of possessions and a step-by-step plan to manage them. Chapter 3, in particular, is a treasure trove of practical advice, focusing on Building Your Game Plan: The Ten Essentials and covering all the crucial topics – triggers, building a team, and creating a timeline, among others.

Magic of the Six Piles is a well-designed plan that will help most of us confront the possessions of our loved ones. The piles are:

  1. Keep
  2. Share
  3. Donate
  4. Sell
  5. Dispose
  6. Ponder

Having absorbed the book’s wisdom, I am ready to transition from contemplation to action. This is how I sort my wife’s possessions into six piles. I am optimistic that it will also help me streamline my possessions, making books my trusted company more accessible for my sons.

Ms. Kodanaz has presented at my bereavement groups and has been an inspiration. She has also encouraged me to write about my love for Jan in a journal.

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The Searcher: A Novel

Read: March 2024

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The Searcher: A Novel

by Tana French

Today, I started reading Tana French‘s The Searcher: A Novel. Last week, I read The Hunter by the same author. I should have read The Searcher first, as it is the prequel to The Hunter, but reading in reverse order helped my enjoyment. Despite knowing some of the suspenseful twists and turns the story would take, I found it a page-turner.

The story follows Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago police officer who seeks a fresh start in a tranquil Irish village. However, when a local boy approaches him to investigate his missing brother, Cal discovers that the town has its share of dark secrets. The book raises thought-provoking questions about distinguishing right from wrong in a complicated world and what we risk when making that decision.

Tana French is a highly acclaimed crime novelist who skillfully creates a captivating and suspenseful atmosphere throughout the book.

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Western Lane: A Novel

Read: March 2023

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Western Lane: A Novel

by Chetna Maroo

Western Lane: A Novel by Chetna Maroo is a taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself. Western Lane is about three sisters who have lost their mother. Their father is encouraged to provide structure in raising his daughters. Gopi, the narrator, is a squash player, and her father imposes a brutal training regimen. I highly recommend this novel!

The following passage explains the importance of squash to Gopi and how she views the world.

In the court, your mind is not only on the shot you’re about to play and the shot with which your opponent might reply, but on the shots that will follow two, three, four moves ahead. You’re watching your opponent’s position and the game he or she is playing, making calculations. This is how you choose which way to go. Though your mind is following several paths at once, it’s not a splitting but expansion forwards and backward in time, and it happens so quickly that it feels like instinct. Sometimes, you don’t even know you are thinking.

In the first few pages, I wondered what I would have done if I had been a single parent when my sons were young. I do not believe I would have imposed on my sons what Gopi’s father did to her. However, I have found reading and art to be powerful tools to help me cope with grief. I have focused on rituals, structure, and purpose.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we know ourselves and each other.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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Eastbound

Read: November 2023

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Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal

by Maylis De Kerangal

Today, I would like to recommend the book “Eastbound” by Maylis De Kerangal, which has been beautifully translated into English by Jessica Moore. The story revolves around a Russian conscript and a French woman who cross paths on the Trans-Siberian railroad, each trying to escape to the East for different reasons. “Eastbound” is an adventure story that takes you through two vibrant inner worlds.

The book has been listed as one of the five best fiction books 2023 by The New York Times. Maylis De Kerangal has done an excellent job telling the story of two unlikely souls with gorgeously translated, winding sentences that evoke a striking sense of tenderness. The brutality of the surrounding world contrasts sharply with the growing collaboration between the two characters.

As the story progresses, we meet Aliocha, a young Russian conscript who decides to desert the train soon after boarding the Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. During a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train, Aliocha encounters an older French woman, Hélène, for whom he feels an uncanny trust. He urgently asks Hélène, through pantomime and basic Russian, for her help hiding him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Hélène’s first-class sleeping car. As Aliocha becomes a hunted deserter, Hélène becomes his accomplice, having her inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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