When she had gotten in the back of the farmer"s pickup just outside of East Grand Forks, Alice had been alive with excitement. Finally, she was leaving the only town she had ever known! No more life on the edge of a tiny town, surrounded by beet farms and potato fields, and the constant dust from the too-dry ground.
That dust got everywhere. All of her clothes were dingy with it. Her skin always felt gritty at best and muddy when she sweated. And even covering her mouth when she got outside didn"t keep it all out. She could taste it, that dead earth taste, just lingering at the back of her throat all the time.
She knew it was worse in the South, where they had taken to calling it the Dust Bowl, but even here, nearly as far north as the United States went, it was still dry and dusty and m
