A 12-year-old girl leaves Chicago to search for her single father, who has gone to Washington State to look for work during the Great Depression. Along the way, she forms a close bond with two traveling companions, a protective wolf and a hardened drifter.

"It's my sister's turn to eat," a hungry child tells her teacher. Quotes like that one bring home what it was like to be young and poor in Depression America. This stirring photo-essay combines such unforgettable personal details with a clear historical overview of the period and black-and-white photos by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and many others. As Freedman says, these images "convey in human terms the true meaning of economic statistics." His...

"Paul's family has struggled to make ends meet during the devastating dust storms of the Midwest. When a family arrives in need, Jake must choose between helping the family or saving his beloved calf. A Christmas miracle helps him learn the true meaning of the season"--

In 1937 Alabama, eleven-year-old Brother helps with his mother's boardinghouse, gains insight into prejudice when he befriends the nephew of the family's maid, and dreams of riding a train one day with the railroadmen who serve as his substitute fathers.

It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression--only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand it. These people are at the heart of this reinterpretation of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century. Author Shlaes presents the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast...

When Kit's family has to take in boarders, it seems as if they may be able to keep their house although her father lost his business, but the changes put a strain on Kit's friendship with Ruthie, especially as Kit spends her days helping cranky Uncle Hendrick.

After a year of heartache and hardship, Honey plans a new life for herself setting up a new beauty shop and finding a new husband. They rally to face the the difficulties of the Great Depression with humor and love.

Red Stovall is a hard-drinking drifter who sings for his super in second-rate roadhouse bars through some of the loneliest, dustiest countryside ever ravaged by the Great Depression. Stovall, however, nurses the embers of a dream--to audition with the legendary Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ten-year-old Beans Curry, a member of the Keepsies, the best marble playing gang in Depression-era Key West, Florida, engages in various schemes to earn money while "New Dealers" from Washington, D.C., arrive to turn run down Key West into a tourist resort.

"When the patriarch of twelve-year-old Bean's sharecropping community dies, Bean gets a lesson in not only what it means to lose someone you love, but also in how his family and friends care for their dead"--