Nathan Box’s Reviews > The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl > Status Update

Want to know something random? Go to the bibliography at the back under the Black Sunday chapter and see if you recognize a familiar name 🤓

Hey! That's really awesome. Now, I have questions!!!

The story sounds made up 😆 every kid in BC had to conduct a first hand interview of a local Dust Bowl survivor and type it up; then our teacher put it into a printed copy called “The Dust Bowl Gazette” for a grade. My partner Andrew’s mom is the local museum curator and put it in their files (maybe along with others? That part isn’t clear) and when Egan came out to Boise City to do research he went by the museum and she gave him whatever she had and he picked that piece out. I didn’t even know he used it until someone told my mom since it was big news in BC when it came out and there are a lot of familiar names in that book since many never left. It is always my “interesting fact” as ice breakers or my truth in 2 truths and a lie — “I’m listed as a source on the dust bowl in a National Book Award winning novel based on a paper I wrote in 7th grade” 😆

It was a seventh grade rite of passage for this teacher so when I say that “every kid” had to write a paper, I mean every kid when they went through her class. But she did it for a long time, I think like 15-20 years until there just weren’t enough dust bowl survivors left to do it anymore.

That is so fascinating. Thanks for the insight.