As dust threatens to engulf her and sorrows begin to drown her, Billie Jo feels as though she needs to get away – and get away now! While her father scratches out a meager living from the unwilling ground, she is left alone to deal with her mother and sibling’s death, her own pain, and the constant dirt that blows in a foot thick through their dilapidated house. As Billie Jo sees her life slowly disintegrate before her eyes, a grim determination – the kind possessed by all Oklahoma farmers toiling through the storms – sets in and wills her to endure.

Using vivid free-verse poetry, Karen Hesse portrays the battered yet tough resolve of a fourteen-year old living in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Readers everywhere will identify with Billie Jo, who despite incredible odds and enormous heartbreak, manages to survive and slowly heal in the midst of the dust.