Whose Names are Unknown

'Sanora Babb, with quiet humor, and a great all-encompassing love for a land and her people, has created a warm hearth indeed in this book. I hold my hands out to it to be warmed' Ray Bradbury 'Thought-provoking description of the mystery, wonder and poetry of growing up in a pioneering environment. A vivid restoration of an important phase of American history' Ralph Ellison 'In my years of researching the lost historical stories of resilient women, few have resonated with me as much as Sanora Babb. A journalist and writer, she was a true trailblazer and a woman who deserves to be remembered for her contributions to both literature and history' Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Four Winds and The Women Sanora Babb' s long-hidden novel Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers' plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author' s firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt' s father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Duanne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless " Okies" and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can' t possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest.

Sanora Babb (1907 - 2005) was a trailblazing writer and journalist who is gradually being restored to the American canon, but whose work is still mostly unknown in the UK. Her debut novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was set for publication in 1938 - but was dropped by Random House after the success of The Grapes of Wrath, as the editor felt the market could only take one dust bowl novel. It was finally published over sixty years later in 2004 by Oklahoma University Press, and recognition for Babb's work has gained momentum with a book of essays on her work in 2021 and a biography, Riding Like the Wind in 2024.