The Antidote

The novel is set in the heart of the Dust Bowl—a disaster that crippled much of the Great Plains region during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl coincided with the economic collapse that came to be known as the Great Depression, with devastating effects. The factors that contributed to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s began decades earlier. Large migrations of Americans headed west to settle the plains in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This rush west was bolstered by the notion that Americans were destined by God to expand westward (a belief known as “Manifest Destiny”), and several government grants gave large acreage to Americans willing to take on the difficult task of cultivating the land. The land, however, was arid and not conducive to farming; this, coupled with inexperienced would-be farmers settling the land and a lack of knowledge about the climate, played a role in the eventual Dust Bowl. The first World War created a demand for corn, wheat, and other crops, and thus farmers set about transforming the native prairie grasses into grain farmland. A long period of unusually high rainfall fooled farmers into believing that the prairie lent itself to such crops. But in the aftermath of World War I, the nation faced a surplus of wheat, since wartime demands were no longer present. This surplus, coupled with the stock market crash and economic depression, caused crop prices to plummet. Thus, as the 1930s began, farmers of the new American West already faced serious poverty even before a period of severe drought decimated crop growth. Even more severe was the ecological impact of planting non-native crops onto former prairie grasslands: The lack of native, deep-rooted grasses stripped away the valuable top soil, causing the earth to turn to dust and blow away.

The environmental impact of the dust cannot be overstated. It filled the air with clouds, coating everything it came in contact with and making it difficult to breathe. Clouds of dust swept across the plains and piled like snow in a snowstorm. Residents suffered from health problems, such as chest pains and pneumonia, as a result of the poor air quality. Estimates suggest that thousands of Americans died because of the dust. The worst of the dust storms began in the Oklahoma panhandle on April 14, 1935, a day that came to be known as Black Sunday. This storm resulted in an estimated three million tons of soil being blown from the plains. The novel opens on the eve of this historic storm

The Dust Bowl not only changed the physical landscape, but it changed the US population by forcing migration from the plains further west. Citizens relocated to areas such as California in search of farming work and other employment. This huge influx of people, coupled with the economic depression, often only led to more staggering unemployment.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established several government interventions in response to the Dust Bowl, including educational programs to teach farmers about the importance of crop rotation and soil management along with creating jobs constructing wind blocks to curb the impacts of the dust. The novel references some of these efforts.