Letters From the Dust Bowl

Inspired by the real letters of Caroline Henderson, a Mount Holyoke graduate who homesteaded in the Oklahoma panhandle in 1907. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, Henderson wrote vivid firsthand accounts of life on her farm near Eva. Dust storms that blackened the sky, failed crops, wet sheets hung over doors, and the stubborn decision to stay. Her letters were published in The Atlantic Monthly (later collected as Letters from the Dust Bowl) and drew national attention, including praise from Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. She and her husband remained on the land through the worst of the storms. This song imagines one of those late-night letters, written by lamplight as the dust falls, and ends with her signature. Copyright 26-08261359