Depression Era Historical Fiction

It's a boring, hardscrabble life for three sisters growing up on a Michigan farm in the throes of the Great Depression. But when young Nellie, digging for pirate treasure, discovers the tiny blue-black hand of a dead baby, rumors begin to fly. Narrated by Nellie and her two older sisters, the story follows the girls as they encounter a patchwork of threatening circumstances and take it upon themselves to solve the mystery.

In depression era America, 1933, three men become unlikely friends on the hobo trail after being accused of crimes they didn't commit.

Artie Call can’t get a break. Orphaned during the Great Depression, Artie finds himself leading a life of crime, stealing food, and hanging with the wrong people to survive. When his mischief lands him in juvenile court, a fellow church goer takes him in. But the trials and tribulations don’t end there. After enduring unkind and unyielding treatment at home, Artie is sent back to juvenile hall. Down on his luck and with nowhere to go, Artie falls back into old patterns. Until Mary Wilkerson, a feisty widow, sees potential in Artie and takes him in. Ray McCandless, the wise yet firm ...

Time traveling from the Orwellian world of 2032 is forbidden. But this doesn’t stop Emma, twin brother Ethan, and their special friend Zak from hijacking a time machine — destination 1932. Four years earlier, at the age of seventeen, they embarked on a failed mission to save the life of Jack Kennedy. Now they are attempting to exhume Franklin D. Roosevelt. His political life and the future of American democracy drowned in the swamp lands of Washington D.C. that steamy, violent night of the Bonus March Massacre. The squatter camp is a “Hooverville”— a chaotic quilt of canvas, ...

A Depression-era newspaper typesetter secretly creates the character she would like to be and dares to hope for the life she may have missed. Rose Coughlin, injured in the wreck that killed her father, hides secrets from everyone. As the Depression deepens, she covertly submits optimistic articles as Lorraine Summerhill, the most exciting, capable woman she can imagine. Astounded by her success, she awakens to the chance to walk and think like Lorraine. But her ultimate ambition is much simpler—to leave the newspaper basement for a home and family. Her mother, Alice, lives in the shroud ...

Following a family tragedy, siblings Lou and Oz must leave New York and adjust to life in the Virginia mountains--but just as the farm begins to feel like home, they'll have to defend it from a dark threat in this New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story. Precocious twelve-year-old Louisa...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad comes a sweeping historical novel set in the Depression-era and wartime New York, where a young...

In a chance conversation, Brianna, part time cat burglar striving to survive during the Depression, learns of a mysterious 18th century map hidden on a farm in New Hampshire. The farm is owned by Hannibal Jackson, a man of color, who was chased off it by the Ku Klux Klan. The map is cryptic, so Brianna arranges a meeting with Jackson at the Liberty Bell Diner, where she learns the cryptic lettering on the map refers to five thousand of something, perhaps something valuable. Brianna and Martha, a gun for hire, go to the farm to look for the map. They park in a nearby woods, sneak onto ...

In this “thrilling, heartbreaking” (Annie Lyons, author of The Air Raid Club) debut novel set during the Great Depression in 1930s New York, a daring dancer must take her twin brother’s place as a riveter high atop the in-progress Empire State Building to save her family from ruin...

It’s 1936, the middle of the Great Depression. Ed Egan, grieving widower and the number two man in a Chicago Irish American gang, reluctantly returns to his hometown, the hard-hit, vice-ridden, brutally exploited copper mining city of Butte, Montana. He was sent there by his boss, partner, and childhood friend to determine if their third partner, also a childhood friend, has been embezzling money from the partnership’s criminal operations in Butte. Egan’s orders are to kill the third partner if his hot-headed boss’s suspicions turn out to be true. Egan is sure they are not true, but...

Virginia, 1930s. The Great Depression has settled over tobacco country, where the land can be both a family’s lifeblood and its undoing. Samuel Carter, a quiet farmer bound to the soil his kin have worked for generations, shoulders the weight of drought, debt, and solitude. His world is measured in planting and harvest, storms and silences. Clara Evans, a determined young reporter from the city, arrives to bring “fresh perspective” to the county’s small newspaper. With sharp eyes and a compassionate voice, she writes of lives overlooked — the struggles and quiet strengths of a ...

After twenty years in a loveless marriage, Evelyn Henderson will do anything to escape her stifling suburban life. She boards a train for Reno, Nevada, a former frontier town that’s booming thanks to “six-weekers”: women from all walks of life who take up residence there just long enough to secure an uncontested divorce—a right they don’t yet have in their home states.

Following a family tragedy, siblings Lou and Oz must leave New York and adjust to life in the Virginia mountains--but just as the farm begins to feel like home, they'll have to defend it from a dark threat in this New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story. Precocious twelve-year-old Louisa...

When the land takes a man, the world comes for what he leaves behind. Laura Clark has survived widowhood, hard winters, and the quiet grief of raising two children alone in the North Idaho mountains. But when a county investigator knocks on her door, she learns that what the government calls protection carries a darker meaning for families like hers. Behind polite questions and official papers lies a familiar threat — the quiet removal of Native children to places like Lapwai, where distance and bureaucracy finish what prejudice begins. To keep her children, Laura must do the unthinkable:...

A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads. But when his closest friend runs afoul of local criminals Frog and Squirrel Fenley, Jesse is forced to spin his moral compass and enter a violent and volatile underworld. There he encounters corrupt lawmen, hired assassins, and a dark family secret that will upend all he once knew. Complicating matters are Texas Ranger Amon Atkins—who arrives to investigate the Fenleys just as their empire is threatened by a deadly new competitor—and the green-eyed, raven-haired Adaline, a love Jesse thought he’d lost forever.

A paster’s wife asks Brianna to look for her beloved mother, Bernice, who went missing three years ago. At first Brianna refuses. She has a plateful of talents but has no desire to be a detective. When it’s pointed out to her that she’s been at loose ends for a time and not doing anything of note except training with Titus, a street combat expert, and dancing the night away in speakeasies, she relents. The fact that Bernice disappeared when seeking information about something of high value also peaked Brianna’s interest. It’s 1931, the Depression is well underway, times are tough,...

"Bridges We Build" takes readers into the heart of Watertown, New York, during the darkest days of the Great Depression. Through the eyes of Maggie O'Connor, a resilient housewife, the novel explores the intertwining lives of working-class families, small business owners, and local leaders as they struggle to survive—and ultimately rebuild—amidst economic collapse. From factory layoffs to neighborhood food drives, Maggie becomes the emotional anchor of her community, finding strength in resourcefulness and solidarity. As her husband Jim grapples with the shame of losing his job and ...

At the foot of the Continental Divide, rancher Frank Redmond struggles to maintain his land amidst the bleakness of Depression-era Montana. Married but childless, Frank’s wondering if the long-term future of the ranch is worth the effort. For that matter, he’s considering much the same about his wife Abby. When a stray dog wanders onto the ranch, Frank’s first impulse is to shoot it as vermin. Abby and Clay, Frank’s father, insist on adopting the mutt, naming him Stranger. For Frank, it’s both the last straw and a convenient excuse. He parlays his skill as a stone carver into a ...

In the swamps of 1931 Florida, the law does not protect the innocent. It protects the powerful. Cyrus Gables survived the Great War only to return home to a state determined to erase him. When a corrupt governor’s private enforcers move to seize his land and silence witnesses, Cyrus and his wife Kay are forced into open rebellion. What begins in the shadows of the Ocklawaha explodes into a violent chase across New Orleans, the bayou, and the corridors of federal power. Armed with a ledger that documents bribery, land theft, and murder at the highest levels of government, Cyrus becomes a ...

She was the last person to see him alive. Hannah Granville knew there would never be answers to her questions. How could Father commit suicide, leaving his wife and children destitute? Did he have any inkling of their fate? How did she fail to understand his intention? Could she have saved him? Was he a coward? Too busy making a living to spend time in the past, Hannah is virtually alone in the world. Her siblings have been taken in by relatives across the country; her mother, too frail and distraught to care for herself much less her children. The only thing getting Hannah through most ...