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Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world...
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The Worthams and Hammonds are as close as two families could be, sharing almost everything on their Depression-era Illinois farms. So when a raging fire breaks out and threatens to destroy the Hammond farm, both families are affected by the tragedy. But how did the fire start? Several of the kids know the truth, but no one is talking. As the families try to overcome aching loss, misplaced blame, troubled relationships, and an upsetting secret, they...
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"[A]n epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America's most defining eras--the Great Depression. Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with...
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What would you do if you lost everything--your job, your home, and the love of your life--all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he's tempted by his darkest thoughts but then decides to take a walk, heading for the farthest point on his map: Key West, Florida. The people he encounters along the way, and the lessons they share with him, will save his life.
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"Abandoned by his beautiful wife, Irene, Henry and their two young children, Thomas and Margaret, spend that summer in a tent on the edge of Black Pond. Henry, an itinerant butcher, struggles to provide for them, but often must leave them alone as he travels the county in search of work. And while Henry loves his children deeply, he is devastated by their mother's desertion. He has not told them why she left or if she'll return. When Mrs. Phyllis...
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Boom times came to the forgotten little southwestern town of Chamisaville just as the rest of America was in the Great Depression. They came when a rattletrap bus loaded with stolen dynamite blew sky-high, leaving behind a giant gushing hot spring. Within minutes, the town's wheeler-dealer's had organized, and with a year, Chamisaville was flooded with tourists and pilgrims, and the wheeler-dealers were rich.
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Like her first two award-winning novels (Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman), A Cure for Dreams is set in the rural and small-town South and draws richly upon the author's ear for comic turns of phrase and her sure grasp of the humor, pathos, and dignity of supposedly "ordinary" people. The determination of the women of the story to assert themselves in confining, dependent situations makes for uplifting, enjoyable reading.
13) Violeta: a novel
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Living out her days in a remote part of her South American homeland, Violeta finds her life shaped by some of the most important events of history as she tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others.
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt,...
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Originally written and slated for publication in 1939, this long-forgotten masterpiece was shelved by Random House when The Grapes of Wrath met with wide acclaim. In the belief that Steinbeck already adequately explored the subject matter, Babb's lyrical novel about a farm family's relentless struggle to survive in both Depression-era Oklahoma and in the California migrant labor camps gathered dust for decades.^B Rescued from obscurity by the University...
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The peace and prosperity promised with the end of World War I fails to come to pass for two ex-soldiers--Arkansas farmer Birch Tucker, who faces the loss of everything he and his family have worked for; and Max Meyer, a financial columnist who may have to forfeit his wealth and influence to gain the son he never knew he had.
16) Prayers for sale
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It's 1936 and the Great Depression has taken its toll. Eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort has lived in Middle Swan, Colorado, up in the high country of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, since before it was Colorado. When she first meets seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, Hennie is drawn to the young grieving girl. Nit and her husband have come to this small mining town in search of work, but the loneliness and loss Nit feels are almost too much to bear....
17) Mother Road
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In 1932 Route 66 through Sayre, Oklahoma, saw a steady stream of dust bowl refugees, and many stopped at the garage owned by one-legged Andy Connors for fuel, repairs, a drink of water, or to rest in his campground. Big, brawny, and relatively well-off, H. L. Yates has come to Sayre to pay an old debt to Andy and finds the perfect way to do it when Andy is bitten by a rabid skunk. After taking him to the hospital, Yates takes over running the garage...
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Nelson Algren was a renowned writer, known for his penetrating and influential social novels such as The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. Originally published in 1935, Somebody in Boots was Algren's first novel, based on his experiences living in Texas during the Great Depression. A wonderful companion to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, this new edition of Somebody in Boots features an introduction by Colin Asher, who is writing...
19) The bottoms
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"It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an...
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In 1918, a fearless 22-year-old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange, she is soon the celebrated owner of the city's most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon. By the early 1930s, as America's economy collapses, her marriage founders, and Dorothea must find ways to support her two...