“The Worst Hard Time” is a book that tells the story of inhabitants who stayed in the plains during and after the dust bowl. The dust bowl was a period characterized by animal losses and crop failure in several areas (Egan 54). This created a hostile environment for any person to survive although some people decided to persevere.
The book takes a keen interest in the people who stayed through and after the tough times by establishing their reason for holding on. It does this through a collection of their experiences and relating them to the terrible events of the time. It highlights the various hardships common to individuals in the area as well as those specific to others. It aims at the conclusion that, ideally, the people should have opted to move away due to the hardships, but instead some defied the logic by staying.
The book, therefore, focuses on establishing why some people stayed through the tough times while others had to leave the place they had once called home. This review aims at assessing Egan’s efficiency and reliability in telling the story of the inhabitants and in giving an account of the hard times of the dust bowl.
Egan argues that the dust storms were the most devastating events that hit the area for a decade and started the horrible encounters experienced by the inhabitants. He describes the air within these winds and the dirt particles that made breathing and visibility difficult for the people. He also explains how the winds knocked down the animals and suffocated them hence the drought in the area. His presentation of the facts succeeded in describing just how devastating living in the area was at that time.
During summer, the temperature could go as high as 120 degrees, and the strong winds could deposit tons of dirt, grit, and silt (Egan 71). Before the tornado, the area was grassland with rich grazing lands hence the inhabitants kept many cattle while farmers had sufficient land for planting. The author, therefore, succeeds in painting the picture of the dire situation in the area through giving a background of the area, describing the devastating events, and narrating the aftermath.
Egan wrote the book to tell the story of a community that went through the struggle for a decade in an attempt to hold on to their land and homes. The author tells the story of various families and individuals during that period through interviews, diaries, self-published materials, and notes. His research also covered public records and newspapers published during this time.
The research provides a background of each individual and family under study, gives an account of their lives during the 1920s, and eventually records their experiences during the 1930s. This enables the writer to relate the dust bowl experiences with encounters of the people who stayed in the area throughout these tough times. He manages to highlight the tough firsthand encounters with the element of resilience and courage portrayed through their decision to persevere (Egan 102). He also highlights the hopelessness of the situation they found themselves in due to the dust bowl’s effects on their lives. The author is a long-term journalist with prior experience in conducting investigations and obtaining information from people making him qualified to conduct the research on historical events.
In conclusion, the author succeeds in telling the story of struggle experienced by a community during the dust bowl. He highlights the tough times through description of the environmental conditions throughout the decade. He describes the situation before the dust winds, during, and after the decade of hardships (Egan 123). The educational background and experience of the author contributes in enabling him to handle the subject and successfully obtain relevant information. From his narration, he brings out numerous reasons why the inhabitants should have left like the others. From the narrations, the reader understands how hard the times were hence reasonable conclusion that the inhabitants should have fled the area. This book delivered in telling of the survival story but fails in substantially highlighting the individuals’ reasons for staying in the area despite the hardships.
Works Cited
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Miffin Co. 2006. Print.
