Great Depression Fiction

Pearl Spence has been through more in her young life than most folks could handle. But through it all, her family has been by her side. They may not be perfect, but they love her, and they all love each other, come what may. That's one thing Pearl no longer questions.

Varmints and strangers best steer clear of this Winchester-toting redhead. Working alongside her grandpa on his Arkansas tenant farm, Rose Linwood learned to love the land as much as he did. Now her older sisters have married and moved on, Grandpa has gone to his eternal reward, and Rose is determined to make a go of the farm on her own. But crops have been slow to recover since the drought of 1930-31, and the whole country struggles in the grip of the Great Depression. Drifters looking for work or handouts roam the countryside, some of them up to no good, so Rose keeps her trusty ...

Artie knows that an unusual gift from his teacher can only mean one thing; his dream of becoming a magician is certain to come true. Why else would she give a top hat to an 11-year-old boy? With his brother Tommy, neighbor Pauline, and Maggie the dressmaker dummy by his side, things are finally looking up, until life around him gets weird. His parents refuse to admit that anything is wrong, but a mysterious knock on the door reveals that Artie's greatest fear has come true. They can call it anything they want, even put whipped cream and a cherry on top of it, but there's no way Artie can ...

She longed for love and adventure. She found so much more. Larkspur Linwood yearns for a more exciting future than life as a small-town Arkansas schoolmarm. Mistaking her favorite college professor’s interest for romantic love, she leaps at the chance to serve with him at a missionary school in Kenya. But his ultimate betrayal shatters her heart, and she slinks home in shame. Anson Schafer, director of the Kenyan school, is losing his sight to an eye infection and must return to the States. Finding new purpose in the founding of schools and relief efforts for those struggling through the ...

It is 1929. The world is about to change. Finn Evans is a successful Boston banker harboring a secret that threatens to unravel his carefully constructed idyllic life. Isabelle Lazar, a young Ukrainian farmer, endures unspeakable hardships in her homeland as she fights to save her family from the Soviet Union's iron grip. Barely escaping the Terror-Famine, she washes up alone on America's distant shores. Fate throws Finn and Isabelle together just as the stock market crash causes a devastating collapse of his world.

In 1936, 15-year-old Miriam Gresham of River Bluff, Idaho, wanted nothing more than to be a famous actress, just like Greta Garbo. But God had other things in mind. The remarkable story of her life of faith comes to light at an estate sale … and to restless Julianna Crosby, it’s a priceless find! “[Hatcher] ambitiously alternates between the past seven decades and the current one to show how the influence of a life of faith can shape the destiny of others. Juliana is 44, and wishing she could start over with a clean slate. When, at an estate sale, she happens across a box of old ...

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Congressional Gold Medal, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel offers an unforgettable account of Hitler's horrific reign of terror in Night. This definitive edition features a new translation from the original French by Wiesel's wife and frequent translator, Marion Wiesel.

Jo has a gift. She is a mathematical prodigy—a woman who sees and thinks in numbers. She secures a job as a teller at Central Bank & Trust, where she recreates herself as a modern woman and rises through the professional ranks. While working at the bank, Jo becomes fascinated by Levi Arrowood, the dark and mysterious manager of the Sky Club, an infamous speakeasy and jazz club on the mountainside above town.

The current crisis is not like 2008 or even 1929. The New Depression that has emerged from the COVID pandemic is the worst economic crisis in US history. Most fired employees will remain redundant. Bankruptcies will be common, and banks will buckle under the weight of bad debts. Deflation, debt, and demography will wreck any chance of recovery, and social disorder will follow closely on the heels of market chaos. The happy talk from Wall Street and the White House is an illusion. The worst is yet to come.

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. Here is Steinbeck’s dramatic adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of George and Lennie on stage and film, including James Earl Jones, John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

Turning the other cheek does not mean standing by while the enemies of God dismantle Christian civilization and brainwash our children. Decrying the cowardice that masquerades as meekness, Eric Metaxas summons the Church to battle. An attenuated and unbiblical “faith” based on what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” has sapped the spiritual vitality of millions of Americans. Paying lip service to an insipid “evangelism,” they shrink from combating the evils of our time. Metaxas refutes the pernicious lie that fighting evil politicizes Christianity.

Beatrice Carraway has dreams. Although she’s aged out of the childhood pageant circuit, she’s intent on carrying her talents all the way to the big screen—if only she can escape the poverty of West Dallas first. But as the Great Depression drags the working class further and further under, Beatrice struggles just to keep herself, her mother, and her younger sister afloat. After a string of failed auditions, she feels defeated. And then in walks Jack Turner.

Take a journey through one of America’s toughest times, the Great Depression. This audiobook dives into the daily lives of people who faced job loss, poverty, and homelessness with incredible bravery.

THE RETURN OF MARY After fourteen exceptionally long years, Mary Bentley, who was missing since the age of five has at last been found by her mum through what most would consider a profound miracle. Now a young woman, she must learn to reacquaint herself with the her biological family who are essentially strangers to her. But what will happen to the relationship between Mary and the loving Irish couple who raised her as their own for all of those years? They live a simple life on a rural farm in Dixon, England, and forge through life with very few luxuries, but have given Mary a God-fearing...

From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins.

It’s 1927, and the most devastating flood in American history has swelled the Mississippi River to a width of eighty miles. In an attempt to save a family trapped by the rising water, four men in a tiny rowboat battle the treacherous flow: three are convicts, on loan from the local prison and pressed into service; the fourth, the leader of the team, is driven by his own hidden motives. But to their surprise upon arrival at Ballymore, an ancestral home protected by a high, circular levee, not everyone in the family feels the need to be saved.

“A lump of coal-taking up space,” is how a fourth-grade nun describes ten-year-old William Chamberlain. Despite his struggle with dyslexia, a precocious and rebellious spirit and labeled dumb, William vows to have money one day; he won’t be poor like his parents. As he grows into adulthood, nothing, not his lack of education, The Great Depression, World War II, or a bad marriage can deter him from seeking his dream. William possesses the innocence, naivety, and warmness of heart of a Forest Gump. This story of William and his family spans nearly three decades.

Hunger. Unemployment. Homelessness: realities of life during the Great Depression. Thrust into these realities, all Maggie Ehlke wants is a home and family of her own. Instead, she’s sent to her sister’s home in Dubuque to earn her keep by helping with her sister’s twins. But circumstances soon send Maggie to the widower Iverson’s farm to keep house and raise his younger three daughters. Iverson’s grown son, the agonizingly shy Romy, dreams of life on the road. But the death of his mother cuts his dreams short while bringing the spirited “Miss Maggie” into his world. Amidst ...

In the 1930s, photographer Dorothea Lange traveled the American West documenting the experiences of those devastated by the Great Depression. She wanted to use the power of the image to effect political change, but even she could hardly have expected the effect that a simple portrait of a worn-looking woman and her children would have on history.

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching autobiographical novel destined to become a classic American coming-of-age story.