Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Egan, Timothy
The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before. In The Worst Hard Time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan tells the epic story of this environmental disaster and its impact on the communities stricken with fear and choked by dust in the 'dirty thirties'.
Donated by the Mukilteo Library Evening Book Club in honor of Sheila Nesse on her retirement.
Grief-stricken after his mother's death and three years of wandering the world, Victor is longing for a family and a sense of purpose. He believes he's found both when he returns home to Seattle only to be swept up in a massive protest. With young, biracial Victor on one side of the barricades and his estranged father the white chief of police on the opposite, the day descends into chaos, capturing in its confusion the activists, police, bystanders, and citizens from all around the world who'd arrived that day brimming with hope. By the day's end, they have all committed acts they never thought possible. As heartbreaking as it is pulse-pounding, Yapa's virtuosic debut asks profound questions about the power of empathy in our hyper-connected modern world, and the limits of compassion, all while exploring how far we must go for family, for justice, and for love. -From the publisher
Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award
An Amazon Best Book of the Year
Washington Post Notable Book
A tale inspired by the marriage of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald follows their union in defiance of her father's opposition and her scandalous transformation into a Jazz Age celebrity in the literary party scenes of New York, Paris, and the French Riviera.
The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Z?abin?ski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Z?abin?skis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants--otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes--and keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.--From publisher description.
