"When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl."--

RJ Evans, a geologist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, begins a new job in a small farming town ravaged by the Dust Bowl, where drought and over-plowing have turned the once-lush plains into a brutal twin of the Sahara; and befriends Woody, an autistic savant born in an era long before any medical diagnosis would explain his peculiar ways and unique talents.

"Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman's only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she...

In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary challenges: local bullies, his father's failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness. Certainly a case of "dust dementia" would explain who (or what) Jack has glimpsed in the Talbot's abandoned barn - a sinister...

As Calvin grows from childhood to adulthood, he and his parents endure four years of dust storms and drought following "Black Sunday" in 1935, and he becomes determined to preserve the land rather than exploit it. Includes historical note.

In 1933, when twelve-year-old Hallie Turner and her brothers, Tom and Benny, take to the road seeking whatever work they can get, they find kindness in small-town Kansas.

"Describes the people and events of the U.S. Dust Bowl. The reader's choices reveal the historical details from the perspectives of a farmer, a migrant worker, and a government photographer"--Provided by publisher.