Out of the Dust

Bibliography:
Hesse, Karen. 1994. Beast Feast. Orlando, Florida. Harcourt Brace & Co. ISBN 0-15-295178-4.

Plot Summary:
Billie Jo, her pregnant mother, and her skin-cancer ridden father are struggling to survive in the Oklahoma dust bowl. Fourteen year-old Billie Jo narrates her story through a series of poems. Billie Jo’s family is able to hold on to hope through the dust storms, the let-down hopes of rain, and through crops that don’t come in, but when a tragic accident happens and Billie Jo can no longer find solace in the piano she loves, hope blows away like the dust.
Hope Smothered
While I washed up dinner dishes in the pan/ the wind came from the west/
Bringing---/ dust./ I’d just stripped all the gummed tape from the/ windows./
Now I’ve got dust all over the clean dishes./ I can hardly make myself/
Get started cleaning again./ Mrs. Love is taking applications/ for boys to do
CCC work./ Any boy between eighteen and twenty-eight can join./ I’m too young/
And the wrong sex/ but what I wouldn’t give to be/ working for the CCC/
Somewhere far from here,/ out of the dust
This poem foreshadows Billie Jo’s flight out of the dust. It doesn’t take Billie Jo long to turn around, Homeward Bound,
Getting away,/ it wasn’t any better./ Just different./ And lonely./ Lonelier than
The wind./ Emptier that the sky./ More silent that the dust,/ piled in drifts between
Me/ and my/ father.

Critical Analysis:
Karen Hesse has created a page-turning novel, her poems are to the point and allow the reader the time and space to absorb the information and connect with the narrator, Billie-Jo on a more personal level. In this novel the reader feels what is not said by words. Karen Hesse's use of imagery to paint a picture in the reader's mind is seen in Time to Go,
..."Wait for me," I cried./ choking on the cloud that rose behind them./
But they didn't hear me,/ They were heading west, and no one was looking back.

When Billie Jo's father leaves a bucket of kerosene in the kitchen and a tragic accident results in which Billie Jo accidently douses her mother resulting in her death and the unborn child, many emotions are experienced by the 14 year old narrator. She blames herself and her father, and feels alienated from her father.
From Roots
...My father will stay no matter what,/ he's stubborn as sod/ He and the land have
a hold on each other/ But what about me?
After Billie Jo returns from running away, the quiet reconciliation between the father and daughter is profound.
From Cut it Deep
He says, "I wasn't always sure/ about the wheat/ about the land/ about life in the
panhandle./ I dreamed of running off too,/ though I never did./ I didn't have half your
sauce, Billie Jo," he says/ And it's the first time I ever knew there was so much to the
two of us,/ so much more than our red hair/ and our long legs/ and the way we rub
our eyes/ when we're tired.
This Newberry Medal award-winning book is memorable long past the last page.

Review Excerpts:
Amazon.comLike the Oklahoma dust bowl from which she came, 14-year-old narrator Billie Jo writes in sparse, free-floating verse. In this compelling, immediate journal, Billie Jo reveals the grim domestic realities of living during the years of constant dust storms: That hopes--like the crops--blow away in the night like skittering tumbleweeds. That trucks, tractors, even Billie Jo's beloved piano, can suddenly be buried beneath drifts of dust. Perhaps swallowing all that grit is what gives Billie Jo--our strong, endearing, rough-cut heroine--the stoic courage to face the death of her mother after a hideous accident that also leaves her piano-playing hands in pain and permanently scarred.
Meanwhile, Billie Jo's silent, windblown father is literally decaying with grief and skin cancer before her very eyes. When she decides to flee the lingering ghosts and dust of her homestead and jump a train west, she discovers a simple but profound truth about herself and her plight. There are no tight, sentimental endings here--just a steady ember of hope that brightens Karen Hesse's exquisitely written and mournful tale. Hesse won the 1998 Newbery Award for this elegantly crafted, gut-wrenching novel, and her fans won't want to miss The Music of Dolphins or Letters from Rifka. (Ages 9 and older) --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Publishers WeeklyIn a starred review of the 1998 Newbery Medal winner, set during the Depression, PW said, "This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the heat, dust and wind of Oklahoma. With each meticulously arranged entry Hesse paints a vivid picture of her heroine's emotions." Ages 11-13. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review Accessed at:
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Dust-Karen-Hesse/dp/0439771277/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9153171-3006229?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192234236&sr=8-1

Connections:

Hesse, Karen. 1995. Phoenix Rising. Puffin. ISBN 0140376283.

Hesse, Karen. 1997. A Time of Angels. Hyperion. ISBN 0786812095.