Reapers of the Dust: A Prairie Chronicle

Lois Phillips Hudson is recognized as a major chronicler of America’s agricultural heartland during the grim years of the Great Depression. Reapers of the Dust, now reprinted for a new generation of readers, vividly evokes that difficult time. From Hudson’s childhood in North Dakota spring these unusual, moving stories of simple, joyful days, of continuing battles with hostile elements, and of a family’s new life as migrant workers on the West Coast.

While drawn from her own experiences growing up in North Dakota and migrating west during the Dust Bowl Diaspora, these stories are beautifully imagined and exquisitely rendered. Hudson was well ahead of her time in the ways in which she blends reality and imagination and in so doing blurs the boundaries of each in ways that would become common practice among writers in the generations following her. Her characters seem so real precisely because they are so perfectly crafted. Hudson’s experience certainly colors their world and shapes their character but they come fully and vividly alive only through the power of her art.