Out of the Dust is a children's historical novel, written in verse, about a teenage girl and her family struggling to survive on their Oklahoma Panhandle wheat farm during the Depression.
Narrated by Billie Jo Kelby, the book's protagonist, Out of the Dust opens in 1934, when thirteen-year-old Billie Jo is looking forward to the birth of her first sibling. Billie Jo is a high-achieving student and a talented piano player, but she has a strained relationship with her mother, who never gives her any praise. Because Ma is a piano player herself, Billie Jo believes she is jealous that Billie Jo is being given opportunities to perform with local musicians. Ma and Daddy also argue often because it has been three years since the family had a decent wheat crop to sell. Drought and over-farming have led to soil erosion, with the dusty soil being routinely swept into the air by violent wind storms; this means that Great Plains farmers and their families are dealing with debt, poverty, starvation, and the misery of dust getting inside their homes and in their food. While New Deal government loan programs offer some help with planting replacement crops, the family will remain impoverished as long as the fields remain dry.
Tragedy strikes when Billie Jo's father leaves a pail of kerosene next to the stove and Billie Jo throws the flaming fuel out the door without realizing her mother is standing on the porch. Billie Jo pats out the flames, leaving her with burns on her hands. Ma is also severely burned all over, and she dies in childbirth; Billie Jo's newborn brother dies within a day. While in mourning, Billie Jo and her father rarely speak to each other. Billie Jo also stops playing piano, which has become difficult because of her hands and because she associates the instrument with happier times. She decides to finally get "out of the dust" by riding a boxcar west, becoming a Dust Bowl migrant like so many of her neighbors. Along the way, she sees only desperation and poverty. After several days, she runs out of food in Arizona and returns home. Once back, Billie Jo commits herself to the home she has always known and repairs her relationship with her father, who has started a relationship with his night-school teacher, Louise. The book ends with Billie Jo playing piano while hoping that Louise will move in with them.
Exploring themes of despair, hope, grief, poverty, and emotional repression, Out of the Dust references many historical events and phenomena associated with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Published in 1997, the novel was recognized with several awards and was named the 1998 Newbery Medal winner.
