The Worst Hard Time is a serious book, but it is absolutely worth it.  Through interviews and research, Egan has put together the story of several families and towns living through the Great Depression in Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle.  The areas covered in the book are part of what became known as the Dust Bowl, areas where the soil was displaced in dust storms so severe that animals and people suffocated outdoors and families cleaned their homes by shoveling out dirt.  It is the story of a unique environmental, economic and human disaster.  The families that Egan follows are those who chose to stay in the region, hoping for rain and a return to the boom era of the 1920s.  Their stories are amazing, more so because they are true.    

 
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