Tales of the Dust Bowl in Lake Forest Park

By Katie Murdoch

Enterprise reporter

A Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the New York Times, Timothy Egan said he didn’t want the stories about the Dust Bowl to die along with the generation of survivors during a reading of his novel, “The Worst Hard Time.”

“I had real life people to say, ‘No, that didn’t happen. Let me tell you how it really was,’” Egan said. “I felt so lucky to be the person with the baton to hand their story on.”

Egan read excerpts from his novel during a “Meet the Author” event at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on Aug. 8 to a full house seated in wooden chairs.

“We thought it’d be ideal to have a regional author,” said Cheryl McKeon, coordinator of children’s and book club events at Third Place Books. “He’s a mild-mannered, hard-hitting environmentalist and very knowledgeable.”

The book was selected for the event for several reasons by a committee comprised of the city of Lake Forest Park library, Friends of the Lake Forest Park Library, Third Place Books, the city government and King County Library System.

The content of the novel is appealing to a broad audience, the story was written by a local author and the book is sold in paperback, making the cost more accessible to a larger audience.

“It’s not a traditional novel selection,” McKeon said. “It’s not quite as discussible because you can’t ask ‘If you were the writer, would you have the protagonist do this?’”

However, the content sparked discussion about whether we’ve learned from the Dust Bowl, how it compares to Hurricane Katrina and if the government keeps people safe from nature, McKeon said.

Despite people talking in the back of the room, his quiet audience kept their attention fixated on him throughout the entire reading.

Members of the Mukilteo Book Club attended the reading to get a preview of the book they plan to read in the future.

“Each one of us has a family tree,” member Cynthia Nowowiejski said. “He describes these amazing stores they hadn’t shared with their adult children.”

The historical aspect of “The Worst Hard Time” also appealed to the book club.

“It’s certainly a story of all of our ancestors,” member Karen Lunde said. “Looking at the damage done to the land, sometimes we don’t know the damage we’re causing.”

With the help of oral history, diaries and interviews with survivors and their children, Egan was able to compile his story of real-life characters who survived the decade-long Dust Bowl.

“My task wasn’t to portray these people as old people,” he said. “I wanted to portray them as vigorous, young people at the start of their lives slammed by this tragedy.”

Egan read excerpts from his novel about one woman, Hazel Lucas, who died at 99 shortly before he began researching his book. Through interviews with her son and reading her diaries recorded during the Dust Bowl, Egan fell in love with Hazel’s dignity and class.

“She blew me away,” he said. “She put on white gloves to feel pretty.”

The excerpt described how Lucas learned to not leave water out or it would turn to mud due to the dust and how her pillow was only clean in the morning where her head had rested the night before. Also mentioned was how the dust filled people’s lungs, causing Hazel to lose her first child.

“That resilience was extraordinary,” Egan said. “To bring a child into that world showed such optimism.”

To help his readers care about the people’s stories, Egan asked about their personal day-to-day activities, what could make each person laugh and could make them fall in love.

“I try not to see them as one-dimensional as ‘The Dust Bowl Person,’” he said. “What was their day like? That’s what I looked for.”

When Egan found a man’s diary entry saying, “I’m a broken man,” it broke his heart.

“It’s rare for men to admit that and open up,” he said.

He also provided the audience with a history lesson covering the effects of World War I on wheat farmers in the Midwest and how the Dust Bowl and the Depression negatively impacted people’s lives.

“Suddenly wheat was a global commodity due to World War I,” Egan said. “In one generation’s time, they went from nothing to prospering.”

However, wheat sales crashed when the war ended, causing the prices to dip. Billboards encouraging consumers to buy more wheat and eat more bread sprang up across New York City.

When the stock market crashed, people living in the Midwest didn’t believe something that was occurring in New York could affect them.

“It affected every part of the country,” he said. “The stage was set for the worst depression of all time.”

The Lake Forest Park Reads program began approximately 10 years ago. The idea of everyone in the city reading the same book and talking about it appealed to the founding members.

“Our fantasy is people will bump into each other and say, ‘I’m reading that too,’” McKeon said.