When the wind blew in the dust bowl, something as ordinary as breathing became a challenge. Imogene Glover remembered, "When those dust storms blew and you were out in 'em, it would just coat the inside of your nose literally. And sometimes your mouth would just get cottony dry because, well, you spit out dirt sometimes. It looked like tobacco juice, only it was dirt, when you'd spit. It was pretty awful. But I just thought that was part of livin'. Everybody else was in the same boat."

The blowing dirt made daily routines burdensome and depressing. Whether one was trying to keep house, run a small business, go to school, or go to church, one had to fight the weather. In cities and towns, the impact of the dust was serious. Rural families had it worse, as North Dakota native Ann...