Unspoken: The Dust Series
By Jann Alexander
A farm devastated. A dream destroyed. A family scattered.
And one Texas girl determined to salvage the wreckage.
Ruby Lee Becker can't breathe. It's 1935 in the heart of the Dust Bowl, and the Becker family has clung to its Texas Panhandle farm through six years of drought, dying crops, and dust storms. On Black Sunday, the biggest blackest storm of them all threatens ten-year-old Ruby with deadly dust pneumonia and requires a drastic choice —one her mother, Willa Mae, will forever regret.
To survive, Ruby is forced to leave the only place she's ever known. Far from home in Waco, and worried her mother has abandoned her, she's determined to get back.
Even after twelve years, Willa Mae still clings to memories of her daughter. Unable to reunite with Ruby, she's broken by their separation.
Through rollicking adventures and harrowing setbacks, the tenacious Ruby Lee embarks on her perilous quest for home —and faces her one unspoken fear.
Heart-wrenching and inspiring, the tale of Ruby Lee's dogged perseverance and Willa Mae's endless love for her daughter shines a light on women driven apart by disaster who bravely lean on one another, find comfort in remade families, and redefine what home means.
Praise
"Reminds me, in tone, of Texas classics like The Time it Never Rained and Giant. I loved it. Alexander is a great new talent in the genre of Texana."
W.F. Strong, author, Stories From Texas
Excerpt
In April, President Roosevelt died from a cerebral stroke while he was at his Little White House near the Warm Springs hydrotherapy retreat for polios. Dazed and grief-stricken, many of us followed news of US Railcar No. 1, the wheelchair-equipped Ferdinand Magellan Pullman that carried Roosevelt’s casket back home as he was honored by thousands of stunned mourners lining the Southern Railway tracks. When the grieving Mrs. Roosevelt wrote of her deep appreciation to the people who waited in the stations and along the railroads to pay their last respects, I longed to be among them. If she could walk by now, Celesta would have been there. The image of Celesta appeared vivid, how bright and hopeful she’d looked boarding the Southern Pacific bound for the rehabilitation hospital in Gonzales, bolstered by the president.
With the death of Mussolini two weeks later, then Hitler’s death in May, there were near-daily surrenders of German forces occupying Europe. Okinawa finally fell to US forces on June 22, 1945, and everyone dared hope the war’s end was in sight. I paid another visit to the army airfield, to bargain with the supply sergeant for a deal on what I speculated would soon be a surplus of Piper Cubs. They’d spewed by the thousands from Piper Aircraft factories, turning the skies golden with the little yellow tail-draggers favored by the War Training Service and the Army Air Forces for flight instruction. Before the start of the war, Mrs. Roosevelt had promoted the civilian pilot training program in a Cub flown by a Tuskegee Institute airman—I still had the yellowed newspaper clipping that showed her famous wide smile, the brim of her flower-trimmed hat skimming her sparkling eyes, comfortably seated behind the colored pilot who was Moton Aviation Field’s chief flight instructor. Their half-hour flight over Alabama four years ago had made news across the country, the First Lady demonstrating her approval of the advanced training for colored pilots.
That’s when I knew I’d be the one flying my own airplane one day.
I’d pored over the dog-eared pages of the book by stunt pilot Genevieve Haugen scores of times since leaving Waco. Its blue-sky cover was emblazoned in stirring gold lettering: Women with Wings: A Novel of the Modern Day Aviatrix. Reading it kept my passion for flight aloft.
At night I’d fall asleep practicing the insouciance of cross-country aerial derby flier Babe Dugan, in her ridiculous reply to a mechanic from the movie Tail Spin:
Bud: Say, don’t you know better than to smoke around gasoline?
Babe Dugan: Oh, don’t be so superstitious!
Of course I knew better than to smoke my asthma cigarettes anywheres but behind a tree and nowheres near an airplane. But I sure admired her spunk.
At the airfield, I walked among the yellow Piper J-3s that had trained many an aviator, looking for the Cub I’d soloed in. Fresh off the factory floor in 1939, the Cub sold for less than a new automobile. I peered in at the familiar bear in the logo on the altimeter, who wore a reassuring wink. With a tank in the spare seat, a spray boom under the wing, and a supply of Weedone, I’d have a fine crop duster. I approached the supply sergeant and we made a deal on the spot.
The plans I’d drawn for our house—with a dining room to handle a table for twelve, a sitting area, a massive living room beside a shelf-lined study, and six bedrooms along the east side with a long covered gallery facing west—were still just that. My drawings needed builders, but the war effort sucked every able-bodied male into the never-ending draft.
I needed a runway, too. It would be the layout I’d seen at Elliott Roosevelt’s Dutch Branch Ranch, where Mrs. Roosevelt had taken me in her private Pullman car.
All I needed was another banner harvest to pay for it all.
A dry spring was again threatening the crops. And the shortage of manpower was holding back the harvest.
Farmers had turned to hired help from Germany—the kind that needed a guard. All across Texas, from Marfa to Mexia, POW camps housed not just Germans, but Italians, even some Japanese.
At first they were a town curiosity, hearty-looking and suntanned, fed well enough, and plenty of them were learning to speak some English to the teen girls flirting on the other side of the fence. The shortage of field workers had grown acute. Where cotton needed chopping in the east, or fruit needed picking in the Rio Grande Valley, POWs became trusted substitutes for our drafted farmhands. Despite their earlier animosity, folks agreed the Germans especially had shown themselves to be good laborers.
At a small agricultural work camp nearby, German POWs were trucked in and farmed out from the air base, and housed in barracks fenced in by barbed wire. Some still didn’t trust the POWs, but most farmers realized without their labor, we’d have lost the entire cotton crop in Texas last year. The German prisoners were resourceful with what little irrigation we could muster, and skilled at building. They were as disciplined at their work as the Texas sons and brothers who’d battled their kin overseas. It was ironic, but dodgy it was not. I figured the risk from the German prisoners was smaller than a gnat’s whisker. Losing out on the harvest, on the other hand, would really put me on the spot.
And that yellow Piper J-3 was calling my name.
Doesn't this book sound utterly amazing?! You can find your copy here.
Book Trailer
Jann Alexander
Jann Alexander writes characters who face down their fears. Her novels are as close-to-true as fiction can get.
Jann is the author of the historical novel, Unspoken, set in the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression eras, and her first book in The Dust Series.
Jann writes on all things creative in her weekly blog, Pairings. She's a 20-year resident of central Texas and creator of the Vanishing Austin photography series. As a former art director for ad agencies and magazines in the D.C. area, and a painter, photographer, and art gallery owner, creativity is her practice and passion.
Jann's lifelong storytelling habit and her more recent zeal for Texas history merged to become the historical Dust Series. When she is not reading, writing, or creating, she bikes, hikes, skis, and kayaks. She lives in central Texas with her own personal Texan (and biggest fan), Karl, and their Texas mutt, Ruby.
Jann always brakes for historical markers.
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