The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan tells an interviewer that the spark of the idea for The Worst Hard Time began when he was working on another story about the death of small towns. Someone in the office where he was doing research made an off-the-cuff remark, telling Egan that most of the people during the Dust Bowl era actually stayed. From this remark, Egan becomes intrigued with the people who chose to stay in the epicenter of the Dust Bowl during its worst environmental and economic times. According to Egan, “Steinbeck's exiles [in his novel, Grapes of Wrath] were from eastern Oklahoma, near Arkansas–mostly tenant farmers ruined by the collapse of the economy” (9). However, nobody knew much about the people who stayed in the heart of the Dust Bowl, near the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles (although in 1930 two-thirds of this population never left the panhandles). Egan believes these people “who hunkered down out of loyalty or stubbornness, who believe in tomorrow” have a story to tell (9). In the Introduction, Egan introduces us to some of these people (Ike Osteen, Bam White, and Jeanne Clark) and foreshadows some of the worst disasters of the Dust Bowl, leaving us with “that slow-death shudder” (3).