Frank Carlson Library

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. in a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and...

On a hot summer day in 1932, Andy Connors, who owns a garage that serves Route 66, finds himself in major trouble: He's been bitten by a rabid skunk.

In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.

Carlos Webster was fifteen in the fall of 1921 the first time he came face-to-face with a nationally known criminal. A few weeks later, he killed his first man - a cattle thief who was rustling his dad's stock. Now Carlos, called Carl, is the hot kid of the U.S. Marshals Service, one of the elite man hunters currently chasing the likes of Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd across America's Depression-ravaged heartland. Carl wants to...

"At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much. But Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his...

A pregnant girl abandoned by her boyfriend hides in a Wal-Mart store, gives birth and becomes a celebrity as the mother of the Wal-Mart Baby. Help flows from everywhere as people jump on the publicity bandwagon, then the baby is kidnapped.

The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath...

"Former football player Adam Mackenzie arrives in small-town Oklahoma to fix up a camp for underprivileged kids. But the city slicker doesn't know horse tack from a touchdown. He's desperate for help--and the pretty rancher next door is the answer to his prayers. War vet Jenna is back home after a stint in Iraq, and she's got a five-year plan: raising her twin boys, running her ranch--and not falling in love. But she can't say no to gorgeous and kind...

The "Voice of America's Heartland" delivers the second novel in her Depression-era trilogy that celebrates the fabled Route 66. Ernie Harding may have stolen Margie Kinnard's savings, but he doesn't shatter her dreams of going to California to become a movie star.

John Tilden's glory days are far behind him, and now it seems like all he has is the monotony of every day living. He certainly thought there'd be more to it than his ramshackle Oklahoma farm and a mundane job coaching basketball at his old high school. He questions his fatherhood skills too: his oldest son won't speak to him, his younger son wants to quit the basketball team, and now his daughter wants to go out on dates. He loves his wife, but the...