I’m not sure where I saw Whose Names are Unknown by Sonora Babb recommended but at some point I put it on my presents list and my Librarian Husband bought it for me.

It was written in the 1930s and bought by Random House but never published by them because five months later The Grapes of Wrath was published and sold 430,000 copies and they believed it covered the same ground.

The Dunne family, mother, father, grandfather, and two daughters are barely getting by farming in Oklahoma when the dust storms arrive. Their neighbours are struggling too and everything depends on the crops surviving. When they don’t, the family scrabble the money together to buy a car and leave for California. There, things are different but just as bad. This is a story about small farmers not making a living, being hungry and being poor in America. It’s also about the very start of unionisation.

I really enjoyed it, if enjoy can be the word.

Buy it from Bookshop.org

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