In the United States, 1936 was one of the darkest years of the Great Depression. Desperate, homeless men and boys traveled the country on foot and by rail searching for work, any work that would keep body and soul together. Desperate women waited for their men to return, trying in any way possible to make a home for their children.

Despite these efforts to keep families together, orphanages were overflowing with abandoned and parentless children and foster homes were few and far between.

It was against this background that Curtis developed his story of a child's search for family in the midwest towns of Flint and Grand Rapids, Michigan. While many stories of the Depression are concerned with the Dust Bowl and the plight of farmers in the Plains States or migrant workers in California, Bud, Not Buddy provides the reader with a different perspective on life in that...