Summary

Before Chapter Six starts there is a single page titled 1934, with another oval frame and a quote. The frame has a black and white image of an old prairie house, and the quote is from a famous Franklin D. Roosevelt speech: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished . . . The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - Franklin D. Roosevelt” (59).

Chapter Six starts describing the unbearable heat and drought in late August; birds drop out of the sky and cows stand listless, too hot to move. After the stock market crash of 1929, there was so much misery the drought was barely being covered, and the government was not providing any help. The rain had slowed so...