Whose Names Are Unknown

By: Sanora Babb

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan

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.

©2004 Sanora Babb (P)2014 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Alyssa Bresnahan grabs attention and never releases it throughout Sanora Babb's deeply felt and deeply human novel.... Bresnahan elicits every nuance from Babb's seemingly simple dialogue while at the same time finding the precise voice and tempo for each of the many remarkable characters. Babb's first-class novel is given a first-class performance." (AudioFile)

true tales of the dust bowl

The original story told about cimmaron county OK. The migration out west and the reason why Oklahomans today still hate the term "Okies".

Beautiful.

I read Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in High school and have been fascinated by not only the time period but the Dust Bowl and the migrant workers ever since. This book was a beautiful account of one family’s journey. Better then Grapes of Wrath. The Dunns felt more real to me then the Joads I highly recommend.

enlightenment

I have read "Grapes of Wrath". I love the writings of John Steinbeck. This novel is more human than the above.

Wow! What an amazing listen.

It has always amazed me the hardships our elders went through, drawing strength from it, and never losing hope. Sonora Babb has a couple of books and I recommend them all.

Great

Liked it better than Grapes. More personal and intimate. Feels more documentary than fiction. You can tell that she really worked with the farmers.