Description
Book SynopsisSanora Babb's long-hidden novel
Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers' plight, this powerful narrative is based on the author's firsthand experience.
Trade ReviewThe publication of
Whose Names Are Unknown rights a decades-old literary wrong."" -
The Salt Lake TribuneBabb puts a human face on the ""Okies"" and others who faced economic and social disaster, yet managed to retain their humanness, faith, and inner dignity. Is it better that Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath? I think so, but you be the judge"" - Mike Nobles,
Tulsa World""As vibrant and timely today as when it was begun in the migrant camps of California, Sanora Babb's first novel depicts the pride, suffering, and resilience of uprooted Anglo farmers who confront economic and ecological disaster. Resisting forces within society that devalue and marginalize them, the declassed refugees work together to form enduring communities."" - Douglas Wixson, author of
Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898-1869""Sanora Babb's
Whose Names Are Unknown has enjoyed an underground reputation for many years among those scholars who have known of its existence. Babb is a skillful artist who identified wholeheartedly with the ordeal of the dispossessed during the 1930s. The recovery of her novel is a miraculous gift that will play an important part in future reconsiderations of mid-century U.S. literature."" - Alan M. Wald, author of
Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left
