UNSPOKEN

In Alexander’s historical novel, drought and violent dust storms sweeping across the Texas panhandle bring tragedy and challenges to a young girl.

Ruby Lee Becker is only 10 years old in 1935 when she sits at the double funeral for her grandmother, Alma, and baby sister, Nell, both of whom succumbed on the same day to the deadly dust plague. Ruby’s mother, Willa Mae, is frozen with grief. Just days later, Ruby falls ill with “dust pneumonia” and is hospitalized. When she recovers, her father and older brother, Will, pick her up, but they drive her the train station, not home; Will is taking her to Waco, where the air is clear. He gives her $20 and leaves her with Granny Alma’s widowed cousin, Bess, with whom she is to live until the air in Hartless, Texas, is once again safe for breathing. Angry and frightened, Ruby decides the only thing in her control is her voice, and she decides to stop speaking. She hears nothing from her family, and in 1936, shortly after her 11th birthday, Cousin Bess dies. Ruby’s next stop is the Waco State Home for Dependent and Neglected Children, where she remains for seven years, despite repeated escape attempts. Playing out in tandem with Ruby’s story is that of her mother; unbeknownst to Ruby, Willa Mae has been placed in the state mental facility. The mother and daughter poignantly narrate alternating chapters in Alexander’s coming-of-age Dust Bowl narrative. In vivid, graphic prose, enhanced by dialogue that reflects the dialects and linguistic patterns of the period and social station of the characters (“A red sun augurs a bad day”), the author limns the chilling cruelty of the treatment of mental patients as well as the abuses that take place at the children’s home. There are also delightful interludes, as when Eleanor Roosevelt rescues Ruby during a dust storm, or when the school nurse gives her special (marijuana) cigarettes to help her asthma. Most appealing are the tender friendships that develop at the home and on the road as Ruby gradually learns that families can be created in all sorts of ways.

Sad and disturbing, yet buoyed by hope and formidable female characters.