Dalhart, Texas

Dalhart, Texas is a more minor setting, where the novel starts and is the location for Chapters One - Four. The setting represents Elsa’s growth as a woman but also the devastation of the Great Depression, and the theme of What is America. The town of Dalhart includes Elsa’s home, the library, the Wolcott tractor supply store (her father’s store) and several other shops and buildings to make it a small town in Texas in 1921. Hannah describes it as a “Texas Panhandle” town and Dalhart is the “county seat” (10). The “Great War had turned these acres into a gold mine of wheat and corn” (10). She explains how Dalhart was a patriotic farming town “fast becoming a city - of box suppers and square dances and Sunday morning services. Hard work and like-minded people creating good lives from the soil” (11). The novel opens with Elsa...