If you read “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, then part of this book will be familiar to you. It details the struggle of a fictional, though representative, Texas farm family, not far from Dalhart, Texas. The second part of the book details what happens to this family when they flee the Dust Bowl, and find themselves not welcome in California. The protagonist begins the story as a sheltered daughter of an upper-middle class family in Dalhart, and describes the social and cultural restrictions she encounters. She marries a farmer, and completely integrates herself with his family. Then the Dust Bowl happens.
This is not “The Grapes of Wrath”, but it is a very well-written description of what life was like in the Dust Bowl region, what would compel someone to leave, even when they really didn’t want to, and what conditions for the “Okies” were like when they arrived in California. It is amazing that anyone survived all of that. Elsa would have much preferred to stay with her in-laws on their farm, and wait out the drought. But when her son develops dust pneumonia, she feels she has no choice but to get him out of that environment. She is alternately helped and hindered by her teenage daughter, who is dealing with the typical angst of that age, along with all of the disruption everyone else is facing.
The last section of the book details the family’s life in a migrant camp. They make friends, learn where to find work, and navigate their new reality as outsiders. Elsa wants to work, and wants her children to stay in school, but these simple desires are almost impossible to achieve. Part of the novel discusses the political issues surrounding the relocation of a great number of poor, desperate people to the West coast. Through Elsa’s eyes, we see the rationale of the impetus behind the labor unrest, and the cruelty of the landowners and anyone else that feels superior to the dust bowl refugees. Though Elsa and her children experience moments of grace, they are mostly made to feel unwelcome in California.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Land records will tell you if your ancestors were unlucky enough to have owned land in the area of the Dust Bowl in the Dirty Thirties. Census records may tell you if they relocated, although the family in this novel returned before they could have been enumerated somewhere else. You might check newspapers or local historical societies, which might have some information on who left and who stayed. Death certificates will tell you if anyone in the family died of dust pneumonia.