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The Bones of Plenty
Lois Phillips Hudson eloquently portrays George Custer, a determined and angry man who must battle both the land and the landlord; his hard-working wife Rachel; and their young and vulnerable daughter Lucy. Through their compelling story looms a sense of a whole nation's tragedy during the Great Depression.
Reviews of The Bones of Plenty:
"It is possible . . .that literary historians of the future will decide that The Bones of Plenty was the farm novel of the Great Drought of the 1920s and 1930s and the Great Depression. Better than any other novel of the period with which I am familiar, Lois Phillips Hudson's story presents, with intelligence and rare understanding, the frightful disaster that closed thousands of rural banks and drove farmers off their farms, the hopes and savings of a lifetime in ruins about them."—New York Times Book Review
"Hudson does a superb job of revealing the physical texture of farm life on the prairie—its sounds, smells, colors, sensations. Then she goes further, examining the spiritual texture as well. Her characters are bound to each other and to their land in a kind of harsh intimacy from which there is no relief. Weather, poverty, anger, and pride are the forces that drive them and ultimately wear them down. . . Like the best books of any era, it convinces us of its characters' enduring humanity, and surprises us, again and again, with the depth of emotion it makes us feel."—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"At her best, Lois Phillips Hudson can make the American Ordeal of the 1930s so real that you can all but feel the gritty dust in your teeth."—Omaha World-Herald
Reviews of The Bones of Plenty:
"It is possible . . .that literary historians of the future will decide that The Bones of Plenty was the farm novel of the Great Drought of the 1920s and 1930s and the Great Depression. Better than any other novel of the period with which I am familiar, Lois Phillips Hudson's story presents, with intelligence and rare understanding, the frightful disaster that closed thousands of rural banks and drove farmers off their farms, the hopes and savings of a lifetime in ruins about them."—New York Times Book Review
"Hudson does a superb job of revealing the physical texture of farm life on the prairie—its sounds, smells, colors, sensations. Then she goes further, examining the spiritual texture as well. Her characters are bound to each other and to their land in a kind of harsh intimacy from which there is no relief. Weather, poverty, anger, and pride are the forces that drive them and ultimately wear them down. . . Like the best books of any era, it convinces us of its characters' enduring humanity, and surprises us, again and again, with the depth of emotion it makes us feel."—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"At her best, Lois Phillips Hudson can make the American Ordeal of the 1930s so real that you can all but feel the gritty dust in your teeth."—Omaha World-Herald
452 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1984
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281 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
September 23, 2007
A depression era novel that reminds me how little my generation knows about hard times. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck tells the story of the dust bowl farmers who uprooted their lives and their families to look for opportunities elsewhere. The Bones of Plenty tells the story of the other people. The ones who stayed and tried to carve a living out of the land that they loved. A hard to find novel by a homegrown North Dakota author.
September 7, 2024
The book that comes to mind immediately when you start thinking about how to describe this book is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I actually think it is as important as Grapes...even if it is virtually unknown. I grew up in Texas(where many of the "Okies" came from, and have lived my adult life in CA where they migrated to, in search of a way to eke out an honorable existence after the entire world conspired against them and the life they'd known. Grapes of Wrath has been a part of me since childhood. Woody Guthrie told the story of that book in a song(the ballad of Tom Joad). It was made into a truly great film by John Ford, starting Henry Fonda as Joad, John Carradine as Preacher Casey, and Jane Darwell as Ma Joad. It's in no danger of being forgotten, and that's a good thing, because it tells a truly important story about our country and our world.
But it turns out that the dust bowl wasn't just a southwest thing as I grew up believing. Nor is Grapes the only truly great piece of literature about the subject. Bones of Plenty was given to me by my 39 year old son, and he had found it in a bargain bin outside a book store in Portland. It tells the story of the great drought of the twenties and thirties and the dust bowl and depression of the thirties. I believe if ends in 1934, and the drought's still on. It tells a different side of the story of that time, as it is set in North Dakota, in farm country So it tells a very important story, and it tells it in some of the best prose you could hope hope to find. As good a record as it is of of what happened. It's also true art. The facts it relates are real history. Lois Phillips Hudson did her homework when it comes to the history. She was an academic after all, and one of her as yet unpublished works is a history of old California.
Some examples:
Rose's chicken house crisis of conscience:
"What ails me, anyway? There’s nothing wrong with you! What ails you for thinking something’s wrong? You haven’t changed a bit since you were ten years old. You’ve had fifty-four years to learn how to clean a chicken house without dirtying your mind as much as your rubbers, and still you can’t do it. Just think of what you’ve been thinking in there. How much you hate chickens. How much you hate to wash eggs. How much you hate to butcher chickens and smell the filthy brown of their warm intestines in your hand. How you wouldn’t care a bit if the chicken thieves took every last hen in this place the next time they come. How you could watch the whole flock get coccidiosis and die slowly and miserably and never feel a qualm of sympathy. Yes, how you could watch them all, and God knows, nothing can look as sick and pitiful as a chicken.
Your own father, Rose Stuart, would have punished you with his buggy whip for saying such thoughts aloud. Is it any better, now that you’re fifty-four years old, to say them to yourself? Now that there is no one to punish you but God? Should you not be thankful, every minute of your life, that you have not had to live the life of your mother and to bear eleven children in a sod hut to a man who would not control either his wicked temper or his evil desires? And should a woman who has been married for thirty-six years, Rose Shepard, be still remembering a dead father’s cruelty—and, far worse, should she be remembering him as if she had not forgiven him long ago? Should there be any hatred in a Christian woman who has had fifty-four years to learn to follow Christ? You may well ask, Rose Stuart, what ails you when you let your mind be filled all morning with complaints and vicious thoughts. You should thank God for every egg you wash and every chicken you eat. People are starving to death everywhere in the world. You should be on your knees before God right here in this stinking manure, thanking Him that you do not have to steal the chickens you eat."
Will contemplating his imminent demise:
"All his life he had been as willing as the next man to take his chances with the forces he could not control, and he had been willing to fight those forces every way he could with all the strength he had. The wind and heat and hail and cold had all contended with him, and once or twice they had nearly annihilated him. He had never before confronted a force that a man could not appropriately fight. Now he had to learn a new thing—how to surrender as decently as possible. At least he would be tortured no more by another mere man, and it had been torture, no matter how well-intentioned. It was not that he felt superior to any other man; it was just that he ought not to die beneath the hands of a small creature like himself when all his life he had fought the mightiest adversaries the sky and the earth could send against him. He thought so often now of that brother who died by lightning as he was felling a tree. There beside the tree that smoked and hissed in the first drops of rain lay a strong young man who would never marry, never build his house, never beget children. Yet even while Will grieved for his brother, he had believed in the fitness of that death. A youth with a heavy, sharp axe was hewing out a place for himself to cultivate and possess—a youth whose enduring passion could not be diverted by the transitory passion of a summer storm. He had worked through other such storms and he knew how, after the sky had drenched him, it would quickly dry him again. He knew that if a man was going to make a space for himself on a hurrying planet, he could not afford to take time off to hide while the planet went about its own turbulent affairs.
And so he died in one lash of the long hot tongue—died before he heard the explosion around his ears or submitted for even an instant to the indignity of fear. The lightning came to his axe, people said. He ought to have known better. But still, thought Will, it took the sky to kill him. For a man who lived not to fight other men but to fight the accidents of the sky, that was a fitting death."
But it turns out that the dust bowl wasn't just a southwest thing as I grew up believing. Nor is Grapes the only truly great piece of literature about the subject. Bones of Plenty was given to me by my 39 year old son, and he had found it in a bargain bin outside a book store in Portland. It tells the story of the great drought of the twenties and thirties and the dust bowl and depression of the thirties. I believe if ends in 1934, and the drought's still on. It tells a different side of the story of that time, as it is set in North Dakota, in farm country So it tells a very important story, and it tells it in some of the best prose you could hope hope to find. As good a record as it is of of what happened. It's also true art. The facts it relates are real history. Lois Phillips Hudson did her homework when it comes to the history. She was an academic after all, and one of her as yet unpublished works is a history of old California.
Some examples:
Rose's chicken house crisis of conscience:
"What ails me, anyway? There’s nothing wrong with you! What ails you for thinking something’s wrong? You haven’t changed a bit since you were ten years old. You’ve had fifty-four years to learn how to clean a chicken house without dirtying your mind as much as your rubbers, and still you can’t do it. Just think of what you’ve been thinking in there. How much you hate chickens. How much you hate to wash eggs. How much you hate to butcher chickens and smell the filthy brown of their warm intestines in your hand. How you wouldn’t care a bit if the chicken thieves took every last hen in this place the next time they come. How you could watch the whole flock get coccidiosis and die slowly and miserably and never feel a qualm of sympathy. Yes, how you could watch them all, and God knows, nothing can look as sick and pitiful as a chicken.
Your own father, Rose Stuart, would have punished you with his buggy whip for saying such thoughts aloud. Is it any better, now that you’re fifty-four years old, to say them to yourself? Now that there is no one to punish you but God? Should you not be thankful, every minute of your life, that you have not had to live the life of your mother and to bear eleven children in a sod hut to a man who would not control either his wicked temper or his evil desires? And should a woman who has been married for thirty-six years, Rose Shepard, be still remembering a dead father’s cruelty—and, far worse, should she be remembering him as if she had not forgiven him long ago? Should there be any hatred in a Christian woman who has had fifty-four years to learn to follow Christ? You may well ask, Rose Stuart, what ails you when you let your mind be filled all morning with complaints and vicious thoughts. You should thank God for every egg you wash and every chicken you eat. People are starving to death everywhere in the world. You should be on your knees before God right here in this stinking manure, thanking Him that you do not have to steal the chickens you eat."
Will contemplating his imminent demise:
"All his life he had been as willing as the next man to take his chances with the forces he could not control, and he had been willing to fight those forces every way he could with all the strength he had. The wind and heat and hail and cold had all contended with him, and once or twice they had nearly annihilated him. He had never before confronted a force that a man could not appropriately fight. Now he had to learn a new thing—how to surrender as decently as possible. At least he would be tortured no more by another mere man, and it had been torture, no matter how well-intentioned. It was not that he felt superior to any other man; it was just that he ought not to die beneath the hands of a small creature like himself when all his life he had fought the mightiest adversaries the sky and the earth could send against him. He thought so often now of that brother who died by lightning as he was felling a tree. There beside the tree that smoked and hissed in the first drops of rain lay a strong young man who would never marry, never build his house, never beget children. Yet even while Will grieved for his brother, he had believed in the fitness of that death. A youth with a heavy, sharp axe was hewing out a place for himself to cultivate and possess—a youth whose enduring passion could not be diverted by the transitory passion of a summer storm. He had worked through other such storms and he knew how, after the sky had drenched him, it would quickly dry him again. He knew that if a man was going to make a space for himself on a hurrying planet, he could not afford to take time off to hide while the planet went about its own turbulent affairs.
And so he died in one lash of the long hot tongue—died before he heard the explosion around his ears or submitted for even an instant to the indignity of fear. The lightning came to his axe, people said. He ought to have known better. But still, thought Will, it took the sky to kill him. For a man who lived not to fight other men but to fight the accidents of the sky, that was a fitting death."
January 20, 2014
My Bluestockings book club discussed this book on Saturday, and Hudson's portrayal of the difficult life of North Dakota farmers in 1933-34 received high marks. Her commitment to historical veracity in terms of the political climate, the crisis in agricultural due not only to the drought but also the manipulation of prices on a national and international level, and the desperation of farmers losing their livelihoods raises the importance of this gripping novel to an important level. It is iconic in the same way that John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" has become. The trials and experiences of the nine-year-old girl, Lucy,reminded me of some other remarkable studies of children in other great novels: Scout, Pip, Mary Lennox, David Copperfield, Huck Finn, and, most recently, Abdullah in "And the Mountains Echoed."
August 21, 2010
This is an historical novel about the "dirty 30's" in North Dakota. It takes place in Stutsman County which is just east of Kidder County where your great grandparents homesteaded. The family in the story are German; your ancestors were Norwegian/Swede. George Custer is a bit caustic, your ancestors were more optimistic.
Yet they did go through those terrible times and George Dahlstrom walked away from his homestead which b y then was a large farm, giving it to the County for back taxes and moved to Appleton, MN in 1944.
They had 18 years of no crop or very poor crop!
A special part of this story is Lucy, a young girl. Through her you experience what it must have been like
be a girl in the harshness of homestead life.
A must read to know something about your family history.
Yet they did go through those terrible times and George Dahlstrom walked away from his homestead which b y then was a large farm, giving it to the County for back taxes and moved to Appleton, MN in 1944.
They had 18 years of no crop or very poor crop!
A special part of this story is Lucy, a young girl. Through her you experience what it must have been like
be a girl in the harshness of homestead life.
A must read to know something about your family history.
November 27, 2014
A must-read for Dakotans! ND high schools should require this over The Grapes of Wrath, in my opinion (however, the latter was an appropriate choice for my high school, in Bakersfield, CA). Tells the story of a family trying to make it wheat farming during the Great Depression of the 'dirty thirties'. It was hard to read at times; little Lucy's tale was at times just heart-breaking for me. Her father is proud, hard-working, angry and stubborn, and reminds me of my own Dakotan dad. I felt lazy for lying on the couch and reading while they toiled away for pennies, so it took a long time to read!
I wish I could find out what happened to Lucy; how she came to terms with her identity as a tomboy and what she did with her life.
I wish I could find out what happened to Lucy; how she came to terms with her identity as a tomboy and what she did with her life.
November 13, 2014
Hudson is listed as one of the top 10 authors from ND at "Read North Dakota." But.... I can't get through it. Will try again another time. Reader fail.
October 28, 2025
Kathleen Norris in her book "Dakota" said that this book is as great as "The Grapes of Wrath". It isn't. But it is a pretty story about Depression era North Dakota wheat farmers struggling for survival against wind and drought, speculators and the machinations of national and international commodity markets, bank failures and government assistance that sometimes harmed more than helped, and competition from neighbors in their own struggle to survive.
None of the characters seem particularly happy with life, except the wise grandfather Will and his innocent grandchild Lucy. Of course, it was not a time or environment that engendered much happiness. The main character, named George Armstrong Custer, an opinionated loudmouth who seems to cut himself off from the emotional needs of his wife and daughter, is positively unlikeable, until it appears that he is a creature of his struggle.
The book is welll-researched and tied into historical events of its times. Though it isn't at the level of Steinbeck, it is an interesting and moving story of people who have set down their roots and made their home, and face losing it all.
None of the characters seem particularly happy with life, except the wise grandfather Will and his innocent grandchild Lucy. Of course, it was not a time or environment that engendered much happiness. The main character, named George Armstrong Custer, an opinionated loudmouth who seems to cut himself off from the emotional needs of his wife and daughter, is positively unlikeable, until it appears that he is a creature of his struggle.
The book is welll-researched and tied into historical events of its times. Though it isn't at the level of Steinbeck, it is an interesting and moving story of people who have set down their roots and made their home, and face losing it all.
November 7, 2022
I had hopes for this book. I grew up in ND in the 60s and my parents came of age in the depression. I've seen remnants and heard a lot of this time. I am guessing this is somewhat autobiographical with the little girl being the author. The setting seems right, as does the description of the land and homes. But the characters were poorly drawn. Unreadable really, I skipped to the end. While there certainly are people there, even now with MAGAs, who complain a lot about most everything, one of the main characters, George, was just too much. None of these characters engaged me to the point of wanting to know what happens to them. Very disappointing.
May 26, 2019
Tried but could not get into this book. Is it worth persevering?
October 12, 2020
Depressing
October 5, 2022
Wonderful novel! Highly recommended
Read
January 5, 2009The Bones of Plenty, by Lois Phillips Hudson. Recorded by the North Dakota Library for the Blind and available for persons who are blind through the National Library Service program.
This book narrates two years, 1933 and 1934, in the lives of George and Rachel Custer, their little girl, and Rachel’s parents and brother who live on a nearby farm. George Custer, (named for the first Custer) shares some characteristics. He is impatient, brash, is very proud and angers quickly. We see George first as a brash but good farmer who has taken land badly farmed, and put it in decent shape over a ten-year period. However, the crops fail, or when they prosper, the prices go down. There is friction between the townspeople and the farmers. And, most of all, there is the continual dust. Hudson describes in detail people having to face the dirt with handkerchiefs tied on that immediately become filled with dust. George would come into the house, remove his boots and socks and pour dust out of them. Rachel has to sweep the house several times a day, and pound the dust out of the bedclothes and mattress daily. But things finally come to a crisis when George goes to see the landlord to try to work out a better deal for himself for the next year. The landlord, not at all considering any of the improvements George has made over the years, tells him to take or leave the current lease. George tears it up, and at the end of the book they are selling all their goods for little or nothing to embarrassed neighbors and getting ready to move west. It’s a heart-rending and very descriptive book. I could see the Custer family moving on from North Dakota to the kind of life described in “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.
This book narrates two years, 1933 and 1934, in the lives of George and Rachel Custer, their little girl, and Rachel’s parents and brother who live on a nearby farm. George Custer, (named for the first Custer) shares some characteristics. He is impatient, brash, is very proud and angers quickly. We see George first as a brash but good farmer who has taken land badly farmed, and put it in decent shape over a ten-year period. However, the crops fail, or when they prosper, the prices go down. There is friction between the townspeople and the farmers. And, most of all, there is the continual dust. Hudson describes in detail people having to face the dirt with handkerchiefs tied on that immediately become filled with dust. George would come into the house, remove his boots and socks and pour dust out of them. Rachel has to sweep the house several times a day, and pound the dust out of the bedclothes and mattress daily. But things finally come to a crisis when George goes to see the landlord to try to work out a better deal for himself for the next year. The landlord, not at all considering any of the improvements George has made over the years, tells him to take or leave the current lease. George tears it up, and at the end of the book they are selling all their goods for little or nothing to embarrassed neighbors and getting ready to move west. It’s a heart-rending and very descriptive book. I could see the Custer family moving on from North Dakota to the kind of life described in “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.
October 9, 2014
Well I slogged through to the end.... Not quite sure why, except that it was a bookclub book and I feel too guilty if I don't finish one of those.
Turns our most of my club ditched this one somewhere in the middle.
It started out ok but then just got too depressing. No redeeming qualities in the characters .
Here's what I shared with the bookclub gals:
Bones of plenty
Some of my ancestors homesteaders on the North Dakota prairie in the 1890s... Just 35 years before this books time frame. I could easily picture my great great grandparents going through many of the same motions described in this book. I have heard stories about grandma picking the bugs off the potatoes just like Lucy did. And the butchering day .... Spot on .
I appreciate how the author captured the loneliness and isolation on the prairie. Having lived up there for a year myself when mike was on vicarage (like student teaching for pastors) and now out here in the constantly windy wheaton area, it doesn't take much imagination to see how the dust bowl could happen...
The strategically planted long rows of trees between the fields to slow erosion stand as silent barriers against time and nature .
I am really glad we (well, ME at least, seeing as how I was the only one who actually finished it) read franklin and Eleanor before reading this one ... The very thorough historical context helped me read this novel with a stronger perspective of the whys behind the hows (bank closings, etcetera...)
I really enjoyed this book at first but as it went on and on it got kind of depressing. wonder if anybody else felt that way? But it was probably a pretty accurate account of those depression years (yes, terrible pun intended, but not in a humorous way).
Turns our most of my club ditched this one somewhere in the middle.
It started out ok but then just got too depressing. No redeeming qualities in the characters .
Here's what I shared with the bookclub gals:
Bones of plenty
Some of my ancestors homesteaders on the North Dakota prairie in the 1890s... Just 35 years before this books time frame. I could easily picture my great great grandparents going through many of the same motions described in this book. I have heard stories about grandma picking the bugs off the potatoes just like Lucy did. And the butchering day .... Spot on .
I appreciate how the author captured the loneliness and isolation on the prairie. Having lived up there for a year myself when mike was on vicarage (like student teaching for pastors) and now out here in the constantly windy wheaton area, it doesn't take much imagination to see how the dust bowl could happen...
The strategically planted long rows of trees between the fields to slow erosion stand as silent barriers against time and nature .
I am really glad we (well, ME at least, seeing as how I was the only one who actually finished it) read franklin and Eleanor before reading this one ... The very thorough historical context helped me read this novel with a stronger perspective of the whys behind the hows (bank closings, etcetera...)
I really enjoyed this book at first but as it went on and on it got kind of depressing. wonder if anybody else felt that way? But it was probably a pretty accurate account of those depression years (yes, terrible pun intended, but not in a humorous way).
March 26, 2016
Bones of Plenty is a painful read because the struggles of the simple, hardworking farmers trapped in the midst of the Dust Bowl are so honestly presented. The writing is gorgeous with the characters struggling through the quiet desperation of events out of their control.
Perhaps the most difficult task that George and his family face is the loss of connection to their past. Losing their farm means abandoning not only a view of a future but also the cadence of their history.
The struggles of ordinary Americans during the Great Depression has been documented many times. Bones of Plenty is a worthy companion to Steinbeck.
Perhaps the most difficult task that George and his family face is the loss of connection to their past. Losing their farm means abandoning not only a view of a future but also the cadence of their history.
The struggles of ordinary Americans during the Great Depression has been documented many times. Bones of Plenty is a worthy companion to Steinbeck.
June 20, 2008
Reading about the depression is depressing! This is an excellent book for understanding what our ancestors went through in the Dust Bowl, the Bank Crisis, and the Great Depressiotn. Well written, easey to read, just not a cheery book: kind of reminded me of the Joads in "Grapes of Wrath" just not set in the south. This book is set in the Dakotas where the blowing soil blacks out the sun
May 11, 2014
excellent book compared with Grapes of Wrath and I found this to be more readable and poignant. Perhaps the fact that it is set in The Dakotas gives it more relevance to me than a bunch of Okies riding in a jalopy to CA but I always did find Steinbeck writing a tad clumsy. Was referred to this book by another good one, Dakota: A Spiritual by Kathleen Norris http://books.google.com/books/about/D...
June 18, 2014
Excellent
This is a terrific novel that deals with the great depression in the dust bowl. The story revolves around one family farm and the town they live in. I learned so much about a subject I thought I understood. Once again I am reminded of the adversity people have gone through and how proud I am to be an American.
This is a terrific novel that deals with the great depression in the dust bowl. The story revolves around one family farm and the town they live in. I learned so much about a subject I thought I understood. Once again I am reminded of the adversity people have gone through and how proud I am to be an American.
Read
June 5, 2016Kathleen Norris who wrote Dakota recommended this book saying it was better than the Grapes of Wrath but little know. She was absolutely right. Incredible read of the Drepression years in North Dakota. So well written the characters come alive. Affected me profoundly. I wish she had written many more books.
May 25, 2010
This was a good read and a little bit of a downer. I was really drawn in by the writer and the characters. I hated some and cheered on others. I developed an appreciation of farm life during the dust bowl years.
May 5, 2008
A look at the effects of the dust-bowl on farmers/farming.
April 18, 2013
Depressing and powerful. It hits so much closer to home than the Grapes of Wrath for those of us who have lived in the Dakotas for several generations.
April 19, 2013
Heartbreaking and very human! I found it to be a lot more readable than Grapes of Wrath.
January 20, 2014
Beautifully written and true to the bone. I'd recommend this over Grapes of Wrath for learning about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression's effect on the Heartland.
May 22, 2014
I put my review here:
http://sharingtheshelf.blogspot.com/2...
http://sharingtheshelf.blogspot.com/2...
June 22, 2014
Similar to the Grapes of Wrath, harsh life of farmers in North Dakota in the thirties. Well drawn , lonely characters.
December 4, 2016
Resonates well with a modern North Dakota farmer. Makes me feel blessed to live now and not in the depression era.
September 5, 2016
Nope. Read 70 pages. Couldn't read another page with George Custer. Insufferable.
September 26, 2016
It was a rather slow moving, depressing book
March 17, 2010
raw, biting look at the depression era. at times poetic and profound.
November 5, 2014
Another look at the depression era, set in North Dakota
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews