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Oh, yes, I recall every detail about that day, even now, years after. It was the 5th of May 1931—a day no one from Harlan County is like to forget.
when the rusty nose of my brother’s Brockway pickup came chugging
The day I met Louisa Trout, it was June in the sky but October in the earth.
Farmland proved to be a damn sight emptier and grimmer than I’d imagined. I felt certain that the countryside should have been green in early summer, but the low hills and broad fields were bare and brown, dry as the heart of autumn.
on an elbow. “Don’t you dare cry for us. It’s yourselves you should be crying for—and your children.” Louisa stared at me, her brows pinched in disapproval. “It’s only getting worse,” I said to them all, “this emergency. This bleakness. It’s only the poor who’ve had it hard, so far, but you mark my words—this is a hungry beast, and once it’s eaten the poor alive, it’ll turn on you next. Your husbands’ money will run out—you’ll see, soon enough. And then it’ll be you and your children who are in the monster’s gullet.” “Shirley!” Louisa exclaimed. “Get control of yourself, for goodness’ sake.”
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September loomed all too near, but Wenatchee seemed as far beyond our reach as it had ever been.
