“As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.”

From Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust.

Born into the dusty world of the American Midwest in early 1920s, Billie Jo is a girl born into a poor farming family.  As the only child, now fourteen-year-old Billie Jo has to help her father work the land, and years of working hard and having to fill the place of the son her father always wanted have helped her grow into a solid worker.  The past several years have been especially hard on Billie Jo’s homesteading family as their home in Oklahoma has been hit hard by drought, relentless dust storms, and poverty.  The only bright spots in Billie Jo’s life are her love for the piano and her loving mother; however, news that her mother is expecting another child gives the family some joy, but it also makes Billie Jo worry about her mother’s frail health.  An accident at home leaves both Ma and Billie Jo injured, but it also pushes Billie Jo’s father to drink and squander away her one chance at an education, which only pushes the father and daughter further apart.  Desperate to escape the constant dust, Billie Jo must decide what’s important as she looks to secure her future.

Hesse’s book is unique in style and memorable in content, especially for readers that enjoy poetry.  This book-length poem is filled with both hardship and heartbreak, but in a way that easily draws the reader closer to the narrator.  Out of the Dust is a moving reminder of the sometimes fragile relationships between families and the power that those relationships have on each person.