Great Depression Fiction

Tig Costello has arrived in Darren, Kentucky, commissioned to paint a portrait honoring her grandfather Benjamin. His contributions to the rural Appalachian town and his unimpeachable war service have made him a local hero. But to Tig, he’s a relative stranger. To find out more about him, Tig wants to talk to the person who knew her grandfather best: Eloise Price, the woman who murdered him fifty years ago.

Journey with a horseback librarian into the hidden crevices of Kentucky mountains. Feel her pain as she struggles not only to barely make ends meet, but as she also attempts to connect the pieces of her own life while her mom continues to make selfish decisions. Lena Davis is the daughter her mom never wanted. But she survived. Through stories. Because books didn’t judge. Books weren’t angry she was alive. Books never expected her to be anything but who she was. 

In the heart of the Great Depression, Rancho Las Moras, like everywhere else in Texas, is gripped by the drought of the Dust Bowl, and resentment is building among white farmers against Mexican Americans. All around town, signs go up proclaiming “No Dogs or Mexicans” and “No Mexicans Allowed.” When Estrella organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos in their town of Monteseco, Texas, her whole family becomes a target of “repatriation” efforts to send Mexicans “back to Mexico”—whether they were ever Mexican citizens or not.

Newly orphaned Magnolia Parker must protect her sick little brothers, but when the authorities send the boys to an unknown orphan asylum, Magnolia calls on her unwavering grit to bring them home. She's lost everything but still has a secret weapon—a promise from Eleanor Roosevelt, the most famous woman in America. Setting out on a cross country quest, she befriends two unlikely travelers: Hop, a migrant worker with a big heart, and Red, a young girl traumatized into silence.

Colton, Montana, 1931: Struggling through the Great Depression, Maddy Aldridge agrees to run an illegal speakeasy in order to save her family's mercantile store. Keeping her dangerous new business partner at arm's length is no easy task, but her bravery faces its biggest test when Jack Rucker unexpectedly comes home. He left town seven years ago, breaking his promise - and her heart. Now Jack is willing to do anything to earn her forgiveness...anything except reveal one important truth: that he's a Prohibition agent on an undercover assignment.

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching autobiographical novel destined to become a classic American coming-of-age story.

Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates ("Hey, Olive Oyl, where's Popeye?"), the lonely girl finds solace in artistic pursuits. Only when she's hired by the town's sole feminist to work the night shift in the local thread factory does Violet come into her name, and bloom.

Chloe Lorraine Kimball is born at the estate of Ivy Manor in the wee hours of the twentieth century. Becoming a young woman, and having a home filled with everything a young girl could desire, she still lacks the one thing she wants above all else: unconditional love from her parents. With the help of friends, Chloe strikes out on her own, determined to stand apart from her family. She embraces marriage and a career, but not even motherhood brings her what she longs for.

Once happily married with a young son, Jess takes to the road to escape her failed relationship and the disappointment of losing touch with her son. Four years into a nomadic existence, she has learned the hacks of van life and promotes a fantasy version of it on Instagram that bears little resemblance to her eclectic community of fellow travelers. But it’s that camaraderie, and the vastness of the great outdoors, that gives Jess the space she needs to find out what really matters to her. And act on it.

Birdie Jennings dreams of a big life beyond her small town of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky—beyond her mundane job tying tobacco leaves at Wrights Factory, beyond her position as the baby of the family. Her life changes when she meets smooth-talking Jimmy Walker. Jimmy makes big promises for an exciting life together, and Birdie is quickly swept off her feet. But some short years after they marry, Jimmy disappears without a trace, leaving Birdie hurt and alone with their two toddlers. Out of money and out of options, Birdie moves back home with her overbearing mother.

A heartwarming story from the Great Depression. Queenie Peavy is the worst troublemaker at school and the best shot in Georgia - with her father in jail, why shouldn’t she be angry? But Queenie wonders what would happen if she tried to behave herself, just for one day.

Twelve-year-old Aaron Broom is protecting his father's car from repossession when he witnesses a jewelry store robbery gone wrong. To Aaron's shock, his father, a struggling salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Aaron - precocious, plucky, not a little naïve - must seek out gangsters, diamond dealers, bootleggers, and street kids in order to prove his father's innocence.

Grown-ups lie. That's one truth Beans knows for sure. He and his gang know how to spot a whopper a mile away, because they are the savviest bunch of barefoot conchs (that means "locals") in all of Key West. Not that Beans really minds. It's 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. With no jobs on the island and no money anywhere, who can really blame the grown-ups for telling a few tales? Besides, Beans isn't anyone's fool. In fact he has plans. Big plans. And the consequences might surprise even Beans himself.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

Sixteen-year-old Nostalgia Richardson has lived all her life in the rural township of Spivey’s Grove, South Carolina, but that has not stopped her from dreaming of running away to Harlem to become a showgirl at the world famous Cotton Club. One night, when she comes home from work, she finds her father in the company of Noah Holdtstaff, the most notorious bootlegger in town. Later, Nostalgia’s 14-year-old sister, Lily, divulges their father’s plans to marry her off to the 49-year-old Noah.

This is the first installment of the action and adventure-packed historical fiction book series, The Boloney Trail Trilogy. The novel tells the remarkable true events of the Hornbeck family, who struggle to survive The Great Depression, only then to become key players in the birth of the feared Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.

A wonderful period piece, set in the time of the Great Depression. This audiobook follows two youths, as they struggle to cross the now-broken country to find their estranged family in rural California. In the process, they discover their own strengths and inevitable weaknesses. In the end, there are many lessons of life, survival, and respect for their fellow brethren.

Millie’s mind is racing and there seems to be no clear line between right and wrong. Either path leads to pain, and she’ll do anything to protect the ones she loves. So she decides to bury the truth and begin again, helping Bump launch a ranch in the wilds of Colorado. But just when she thinks she’s left her old Mississippi life behind, the facts surface in the most challenging way.