Verse Novel- Out of the Dust

Out of the Dust

By: Karen Hesse

Fourteen year old Billie Jo Kelby tells the story of her hard life in Oklahoma during the Depression. She chronicles the tragedies of her own family and neighboring community through narrative poems. In her short life, she deals with nature’s fury destroying her family’s livelihood yet ironically discovers her musical hands bringing hope of a silver lining. It is with these gifted hands that a horrific accident eventually takes the life of her mother and robs her of last piece of happiness that she had. Billie Jo Kelby is bound and determined to rise Out of the Dust.

Hesse awakens the readers’ senses with language like in the free verse poem Dust and Rain- On Sunday/Winds came/ bringing red dust/ like prairie fire/ hot peppery/searing the inside of my nose/ the whites of my eye/ Roaring dust/ turning day from sunlight to midnight. She takes readers inside this time period creating imagery as if the readers were there. Her words bring about such imagery in Hopes in Drizzle- she brings the reader into the picture Billy Jo is witnessing of her mother in the drizzle- Today, she stood out in the drizzle/ hidden from the road/ and from Daddy/ and she thought from me/ but I could see her from the barn/ she was bare as a pear/ raindrops/ sliding down her skin/ leaving traces of mud on her face and her long back/ trickling dark and light paths/slow tracks of wet dust down the bulge of her belly/ My dazzling ma, round and ripe and striped/like a melon.

This historically, rich book pays honor to past farmers and families that endured horrific conditions in our country to only to rise above and prosper. Always in the midst of their own hardship, they were willing to lend a hand. This is presented in Wild Boy on the Road A boy came by the house today/ he asked for food. He couldn’t pay anything, but Ma set him down/ and gave him biscuits/ and milk. She goes on this poem to describe the image of this poor boy his legs like willow limbs/ his arms like reeds.

The author’s free verse poetry is arranged into chapters of seasons and further divided into months between each major chapter/season. She leaves the reader wishing for this season of purgatory to end for young Billy Jo. Hesse leaves her audience inspired that mother nature is always present in the poem Hope describing the first sustainable rain …..Steady as a good friend/ who walks beside you/not getting in your way/ staying with you through a hard time.

Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust, New York:NY. Scholastic Press. 1997