100 books like An American Exodus

By Dorothea Lange (photographer), Paul Taylor (contributor),

Here are 100 books that An American Exodus fans have personally recommended if you like An American Exodus. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Grapes of Wrath

Nick Brown Author Of The Siege: Agent of Rome 1

From my list on books that take you to another world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Before I was a writer, I was a reader.  My mother was a primary school teacher, so I was encouraged to read from my earliest years. I wanted to be not only entertained but transported to another place, time, or world. When I finally decided to write my first novel, I settled on historical fiction, but I have since written both science fiction and fantasy. I always endeavour to emulate my literary heroes and create engaging characters, compelling plots, and an interesting, unusual, convincing world.

Nick's book list on books that take you to another world

Nick Brown Why did Nick love this book?

Though set less than a century ago, the world of Steinbeck’s novel is so very different from our own. This masterpiece follows the Joad family as they head west to California, escaping the hardship and poverty of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

Depression-era America is described with such detail and emotion that the reader feels almost like a companion of the Joads, each of whom are rendered with precision and depth. In other hands, this might have been a grim, gloomy tale, but Steinback evokes themes of loyalty, kindness, and pride with peerless power and skill.  

By John Steinbeck,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Grapes of Wrath as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.'

Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.


Book cover of An Owl on Every Post

Rae Meadows Author Of I Will Send Rain

From my list on the heart of the Dust Bowl.

Why am I passionate about this?

Photographs, for me, are essential to writing about a particular period. They ignite my imagination like nothing else. For this book I pored over the Library of Congress archives of 1930s FSA photographs, particularly those by Dorothea Lange. Her photos capture humanity at its most desperate, most determined, and they walloped me. Such ruin and poverty, and lives upended. But those faces of Lange’s were what helped me find my characters. I hope that the story of the Bell family transports you to a time and place like none other in American history. These five selections will give you further insight into what life what like.

Rae's book list on the heart of the Dust Bowl

Rae Meadows Why did Rae love this book?

Babb’s memoir recounts her years as a child of bumbling pioneers on the high plains of Colorado. Her family lived underground in a dugout and eked out existence from the drought-ravaged prairie. The book predates the Dust Bowl, but there are warning signs of what’s to come. Told in a voice of lyric precision with a memorable cast of characters, it’s a compelling story of a singular girlhood that left me marveling at how this family survived. 

By Sanora Babb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked An Owl on Every Post as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sanora Babb experienced pioneer life in a one-room dugout, eye-level with the land that supported, tormented and beguiled her; where her family fought for their lives against drought, crop-failure, starvation, and almost unfathomless loneliness. Learning to read from newspapers that lined the dugout's dirt walls, she grew up to be a journalist, then a writer of unforgettable books about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, most notably Whose Names Are Unknown.

The author was seven when her parents began to homestead an isolated 320-acre farm on the western plains. She tells the story through her eyes as a sensitive,…


Book cover of Letters from the Dust Bowl

Rae Meadows Author Of I Will Send Rain

From my list on the heart of the Dust Bowl.

Why am I passionate about this?

Photographs, for me, are essential to writing about a particular period. They ignite my imagination like nothing else. For this book I pored over the Library of Congress archives of 1930s FSA photographs, particularly those by Dorothea Lange. Her photos capture humanity at its most desperate, most determined, and they walloped me. Such ruin and poverty, and lives upended. But those faces of Lange’s were what helped me find my characters. I hope that the story of the Bell family transports you to a time and place like none other in American history. These five selections will give you further insight into what life what like.

Rae's book list on the heart of the Dust Bowl

Rae Meadows Why did Rae love this book?

Henderson was a homesteader and teacher in the Oklahoma panhandle and this collection of her writing creates a compelling first-hand portrait of the Dust Bowl. Impeccably detailed about rural farm life, from the days of prosperity to the bare-bones existence necessitated by hardship, Henderson is a thoughtful, ponderous guide. “Out here we thought the depths of the depression had been fathomed some time ago when the sheriff subtracted from the very personal possessions of one our neighbors a set of false teeth that he had been unable to pay for.” 

By Caroline Henderson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Letters from the Dust Bowl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In May 1936 Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace wrote to Caroline Henderson to praise her contributions to American ""understanding of some of our farm problems."" His comments reflected the national attention aroused by Henderson's articles, which had been published in Atlantic Monthly since 1931. Even today, Henderson's articles are frequently cited for her vivid descriptions of the dust storms that ravaged the Plains.

Caroline Henderson was a Mount Holyoke graduate who moved to Oklahoma's panhandle to homestead and teach in 1907. This collection of Henderson's letters and articles published from 1908 to1966 presents an intimate portrait of a woman's…


Book cover of Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field

Rae Meadows Author Of I Will Send Rain

From my list on the heart of the Dust Bowl.

Why am I passionate about this?

Photographs, for me, are essential to writing about a particular period. They ignite my imagination like nothing else. For this book I pored over the Library of Congress archives of 1930s FSA photographs, particularly those by Dorothea Lange. Her photos capture humanity at its most desperate, most determined, and they walloped me. Such ruin and poverty, and lives upended. But those faces of Lange’s were what helped me find my characters. I hope that the story of the Bell family transports you to a time and place like none other in American history. These five selections will give you further insight into what life what like.

Rae's book list on the heart of the Dust Bowl

Rae Meadows Why did Rae love this book?

Dorothea Lange was employed by the Farm Securities Administration to photograph the conditions of the Depression, including the Dust Bowl and its migrants. She was an art photographer with a social justice streak whose detailed captions recorded details of the lives of her subjects. Spirn chronicles how Lange made her narrative case through her photographic choices and documentation. The book also presents a marvelous collection of lesser-known Lange photographs.

By Anne Whiston Spirn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Daring to Look as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Daring to Look" presents never-before-published photos and captions from Dorothea Lange's fieldwork in California, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina during 1939. Lange's images of squatter camps, benighted farmers, and stark landscapes are stunning, and her captions - which range from simple explanations of settings to historical notes and biographical sketches - add unexpected depth, bringing her subjects and their struggles unforgettably to life, often in their own words. When Lange was dismissed from the Farm Security Administration at the end of 1939, these photos and field notes were consigned to archives, where they languished, rarely seen. With "Daring to…


Book cover of Rainwater

Kathleen Tailer Author Of Marked to Die

From my list on romantic suspense to keep turning pages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always loved suspenseful books, and I enjoy creating my own characters and helping them strengthen their faith as they triumph in difficult circumstances. I want to encourage other Christians with my writing, and introduce others to Christ who may be searching to see how God can change their lives. I also want to provide readers with a fun getaway of excitement, suspense, and thrills. I am an attorney and see many cases that don’t conclude with a happy ending, however, God can take what men meant for evil, and turn it into good, and there is a positive and encouraging ending waiting in each of my books.

Kathleen's book list on romantic suspense to keep turning pages

Kathleen Tailer Why did Kathleen love this book?

As the parent and sister of a person with disabilities, I look for authors who can handle this topic in a sensitive and loving way.

Ms. Brown does an amazing job as she weaves suspense into this depression era story. I fell in love with the characters, and this book encouraged me to keep looking for ways to include these special people into my own stories.

By Sandra Brown,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Rainwater as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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, launders, and cares for her ten-year-old son, Solly, a sweet but challenging child whose busy behavior and failure to speak elicits undesired advice from others in town. Ella’s plate is full from sunup to sundown. When a room in her boarding house opens up, the respected town doctor brings…


Book cover of Joy of Cooking 1931

Susan Wittig Albert Author Of The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker

From my list on America’s toughest time: life in the dirty thirties.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer and history buff who loves to make fiction out of facts. For me, the best stories are imagined out of truths we have all lived, real places that are mapped in our memories, real people whose names conjure events, past times that are prelude to our own. I like to read books built on plots and puzzles, so I write mysteries. I love books about real people, so I write biographical novels bent around the secret selves of people we only thought we knew: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe. 

Susan's book list on America’s toughest time: life in the dirty thirties

Susan Wittig Albert Why did Susan love this book?

Food history—why and how and what we eat—is one of my favorite topics. The first edition of Irma Rambauer’s The Joy of Cooking inspired 1930s American cooks to make an eight layer cake, a celery aspic, a chicken bisque, cinnamon toast, shrimp wiggle, and green peppers filled with macaroni. Recently widowed, Rombauer self-published the book to support her family—and thereby became a heroine for 1930s homemakers. Her Cheese Custard Pie, so far as I know, is the first recipe for quiche in an American cookbook. It is introduced with these memorable words: “In Switzerland we had a vile tempered cook named Marguerite” whose quiche varied with “her moods and her supply of cheese.” (I love recipes that tell us something about the cook.)

By Irma S. Rombauer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Joy of Cooking 1931 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1931, Irma Rombauer announced that she intended to turn her personal collection of recipes and cooking techniques into a cookbook. Cooking could no longer remain a private passion for Irma. She had recently been widowed and needed to find a way to support her family. Irma was a celebrated St. Louis hostess who sensed that she was not alone in her need for a no-nonsense, practical resource in the kitchen. So, mustering what assets she had, she self-published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat. Out of these unlikely circumstances was born…


Book cover of Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939

Susan Wittig Albert Author Of The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker

From my list on America’s toughest time: life in the dirty thirties.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer and history buff who loves to make fiction out of facts. For me, the best stories are imagined out of truths we have all lived, real places that are mapped in our memories, real people whose names conjure events, past times that are prelude to our own. I like to read books built on plots and puzzles, so I write mysteries. I love books about real people, so I write biographical novels bent around the secret selves of people we only thought we knew: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe. 

Susan's book list on America’s toughest time: life in the dirty thirties

Susan Wittig Albert Why did Susan love this book?

I’m a huge fan of books that are packed with compelling details. In Since Yesterday, Frederick Allen covers everything about the Thirties, from fashion to food to politics, music, and movies—and everything in between. A powerful story, sometimes dark but rich with odd little treasures that will make you smile. I especially like the searchable digital edition. Example quote: “Dance orchestras were blaring ‘The Music Goes ’Round and ’Round.’ Major Bowes was the current radio sensation, so warmly did he inquire into the life histories of the yodelers and jews-harp-players on his Amateur Hour. At the movie houses Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were dancing nimbly in ‘Follow the Fleet.’ Seven-year-old Shirley Temple was becoming the rising star of Hollywood.”

By Frederick Lewis Allen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Since Yesterday as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A “wonderfully written account of America in the ’30s,” the follow-up to Only Yesterday examines Black Tuesday through the end of the Depression (The New York Times).

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

Opening on September 3, 1929, in the days before the stock market crash, this information-packed volume takes us through one of America’s darkest times all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel.
 
Following Black Tuesday, America plunged into the Great Depression. Panic and fear gripped the nation. Banks were closing everywhere. In some cities, 84 percent of the population was unemployed and starving. When Franklin…


Book cover of Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp

Rebecca Langston-George Author Of The Booth Brothers: Drama, Fame, and the Death of President Lincoln

From my list on little-known US history for children.

Why am I passionate about this?

I taught for more than 26 years in classes ranging from first grade through college. No matter the age of the students, I used children’s books to introduce topics in history. I never shied away from using a picture book with older students and often found they were more engaged in a picture book than in an article. I also used historical fiction as a hook to lure students into picking up a related non-fiction book. In fact, historical fiction was the gateway that taught this writer of 13 nonfiction children’s books to love non-fiction history. 

Rebecca's book list on little-known US history for children

Rebecca Langston-George Why did Rebecca love this book?

This nonfiction book is not only dear to my heart, I can also honestly say it changed my life.

It’s about the only Federal Emergency School ever created. Built for the children of farm workers displaced by the Dust Bowl in 1940, it tells of School Superintendent Leo B. Hart’s ingenuity and steadfast devotion to children who faced seemingly insurmountable hardships and discrimination as occupants of the migrant camp outside Bakersfield, California that inspired John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

I taught at this school, now known as Sunset, for many years, and I kept a note in my lesson planner that read What would Leo B. Hart do? 

By Jerry Stanley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Children of the Dust Bowl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

Illus. with photographs from the Dust Bowl era. This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.


Book cover of The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Lynn Kanter Author Of Her Own Vietnam

From my list on when the political turns personal.

Why am I passionate about this?

Many of us were taught as children that life isn’t fair. I never accepted this; shouldn’t we do all we can to make life fair? I grew up to be a lifelong activist and a writer for social justice organizations. As a reader and writer, I love books about women’s lives, especially women who realize that the world around them shapes their own experiences. Sometimes history is happening right here, right now—and you know it. Those transformative moments spark the best stories, illuminating each book I’ve recommended. 

Lynn's book list on when the political turns personal

Lynn Kanter Why did Lynn love this book?

I’d always assumed that the Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a natural disaster. Nope. The scouring dust storms that destroyed thousands of lives and millions of farms in five states didn’t have to happen. They were the predictable—and predicted!—result of short-sighted human decisions, such as the government handing tracts of formerly Indian land to white settlers to tear out the nourishing native grasses and plant wheat instead.

The human hand behind extreme weather might seem obvious to us now, but it was eye-opening for me in 2006 when I read this riveting nonfiction drama of families trapped in a living nightmare. I have never forgotten its impact or its lessons.

By Timothy Egan,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Worst Hard Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters…


Book cover of Let the Wild Grasses Grow

Craig Lancaster Author Of And It Will Be A Beautiful Life

From my list on Books featuring characters navigating the contemporary American West.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a son of the contemporary American West—born near the Pacific Coast, raised in Texas, and an inveterate traveler of its byways and odd corners. Through the duality of my upbringing, as the son of a well-traveled mother, a suburban sportswriter stepfather, and a father who worked in extractive industries, I’ve seen up close both harmony and dissonance. The work I’m drawn to, whether on the creation end or the consumptive end, goes deep into the lives that play out in these places.

Craig's book list on Books featuring characters navigating the contemporary American West

Craig Lancaster Why did Craig love this book?

I was utterly awed by Kase Johnstun’s boundless love for the characters in this novel, which I learned later was informed by memories of and letters by his grandparents.

It overflows with some of my favorite things about the literature that most often resonates with me: When an author of great skill can mine memory and history, spend time with it, apply the transformative agent of imagination, and emerge into the world with work laden with genuineness.

I find Johnstun’s work to be imbued with love, which he marries to considerable storytelling chops. He’s a writer more people should know about, so it’s become a bit of a mission of mine to shout his name.

By Kase Johnstun,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Let the Wild Grasses Grow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Beautiful and expansive…in Johnstun's Let the Wild Grasses Grow, Colorado has a successor to Kent Haruf."
—SEAN PRENTISS, author of Finding Abbey

Let the Wild Grasses Grow chronicles the lives of Della Chavez and John Cordova, childhood friends separated by a tragic accident, who find each other again during World War II after leading separate lives of struggle through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and, for John, abuse at the hands of his grandfather. This sweeping American love story celebrates the power of home landscapes, family heritage, and first love.


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Dust Bowl, spirituality, and Christianity?

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