Depression Era Fiction

A romantic historical novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seeing Red about an independent woman who runs a boarding house in Dust Bowl Texas. Ella Baron runs her Texas boarding house with the efficiency of a ship’s captain and the grace of a gentlewoman. She cooks, cleans...

In the heart of Depression‑Era Harlem, where rent strikes simmer and tenements groan under neglect, two souls find each other in the shadows of survival. Vivian Carter has learned to live quietly, stitching hope into every corner of her small apartment. Isaiah Turner carries the weight of the neighborhood on his shoulders, fighting for tenants who have been ignored for far too long. When a violent confrontation threatens to break the block apart, their lives collide in a way neither expected. As Harlem rises — organizing, resisting, standing together beneath the glow of lantern light ...

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 ...

In the heart of the Appalachians, an ancient power stirs—and a family must decide whether to hide or fight. For generations, the Reillys have practiced the old druidic ways in secret: communing with spirits, binding themselves to beasts, and guarding the wilds of Virginia. But the 1930s bring new enemies. Coal barons and their hired guns want the land. Mafia enforcers smell moonshine profits. And the people of Amber’s Hollow, trapped in the middle, are running out of time. Now Sean Reilly, a novice still awaiting his first animal form, must stand with his father, Erin the scarred bear, ...

Kansas is blowing away. In the spring of 1934, Birdie Marsh drives back to her grandmother's farm outside Willow Creek with everything she owns in the truck bed, two daughters beside her on the seat, and a bank note coming due in six months she has no clear way to pay. The Townsend Farm has been sitting empty, the chicken coop home to fourteen hens and not much else. Birdie has the deed, the ground, and the conviction that her grandmother's farm is not going to be lost on her watch. What she builds from that beginning surprises even her. Starting with a dinner order she cannot fill alone, ...

Steinbeckâ€s tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependent on one another for both physical and emotional survivalPublished in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual...

2 CHILDREN FOR SALE. In 1931, near Philadelphia, ambitious reporter Ellis Reed photographs the gut-wrenching sign posted beside a pair of siblings on a farmhouse porch. With the help of newspaper secretary Lily Palmer, Ellis writes an article to accompany the photo. Capturing the hardships of American families during the Great Depression, the feature story generates national attention and Ellis's career skyrockets. But the piece also leads to consequences more devastating than he and Lily ever imagined - and it will risk everything they value to unravel the mystery and set things right.

At one time, Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that she had a story to tell. For the first 50 years of her life, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to her. She was a spinster watchmaker living contentedly with her sister and their elderly father in the tiny house over their shop in Haarlem. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another. But with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, everything changed....

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...

A preacher can lie to a whole town. A dog can't lie to a boy. Thirteen-year-old Tad Ryder and his bluetick coonhound True know Blue Eye, Missouri the way they know each other. They know the White River bends, the church pews, and the sound of a summer with nothing much wrong in it. Then Reverend Virgil Fenn rides into town with a revival tent, a building fund, and a voice that makes grown men reach for their wallets. The whole congregation believes him. Gramps hands over thirty dollars he can't spare. Grams takes to her bed with worry. Even Tad's best friend Luther starts spending his ...

LYNN BUCHANAN IS LOOKING FOR HER BIRTH MOTHER After losing her parents and learning she is adopted, Lynn travels to the SE section of Missouri, known as the bootheel, to search for her mother. When she tangles with handsome Mitch Stratton, her plans and dreams are thrown into a tailspin. Mitch must focus on keeping his cotton gin operating and providing jobs for his employees. Meeting the newfound sister of his best friend is a complication to his plans--and his heart.

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...

From the author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon—“Walls vividly depicts her astonishing, resilient grandmother with a lightness of touch that is plainspoken yet heartfelt” (Chicago Tribune). This unforgettable true-life novel tells the story of an indomitable woman whose remarkable...

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 World War II historical novel set in Depression-era New York, where a young...

NAMED A 2023 ALA NOTABLE CHILDREN’S RECORDING! Four starred reviews! “Told in a voice that is so real it reeks of filched peaches, this book is a home run.” —Amy Sarig King, Printz Award–winning author of Dig and The Year We Fell from Space Sandlot meets Esperanza Rising in this...

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. 

From an Award-Winning USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR...A heartwarming Southern Saga about a perfect family in an imperfect world... Laura Wilkes has everything a woman could want when she snaps the picture of her five-year-old daughter on the carousel. Each time the carousel comes around Laura snaps another picture, seven in all. This is a day of unforgettable happiness; one of the few Laura has left. In the months following the stock market crash the family is beset by tragedy. A homicide that goes unpunished. It's the height of the depression and there are hoards of faceless, nameless men ...

South Dakota, 1933. The Depression and a relentless drought weigh heavily on Peter Hawkins and his family. Peter has worked tirelessly to provide for his growing household, but thin, dry wheat fields leave their future uncertain. With five children to care for—including twin toddlers—he’s counting on one good field to carry them through the year. When the custom harvest crews refuse to come, even that hope begins to fade. Delia does her part—stretching the cream, butter, and eggs from her hens—while Peter shoulders the burden of keeping the farm alive. Then Peter strikes on a bold...

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

New Hampshire, 1934. The mill has burned, eleven men are dead, and the company wants its safe back before it wants its dead. Merritt Shaw is a blacklisted river driver with no work and no prospects when the court receiver offers him a job no one else will take: haul the company safe forty-six miles overland to the railhead, across the breaking-up of the northern woods, in four days, before the spring thaw takes the ice for good. What Shaw is not told is that the job was built to fail. Locked inside the safe are the wages the town was never paid, the records that will say why the boiler was ...