Out of the Dust | Plot Summary

Out of the Dust Overview

Out of the Dust is Billie Jo Kelby's first person narration of her life near Joyce City, Oklahoma from January 1934 though December 1935 when she was fourteen and fifteen years old.

This part of the Oklahoma Panhandle, near the Oklahoma border, was among the hardest hit areas by dust storms and tornadoes, scorching the earth and causing terrific hardship for the people and animals that persisted to inhabit the land. Billie Jo's father is a wheat farmer, and although his crop has failed year after year, he believes that the rains will surely come and fecundity will be restored to the land.

He is not so much an optimist in his faith that the rains will come as he is a part of the land, which has endured so long and with periods of great fecundity, that it is inconceivable to him that restoration will...
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