Ann Marie Low's DUST BOWL DIARY is a very personal and revealing snapshot-like look at life on a family ranch in North Dakota in the worst years of the Great Depression and a years-long drought which resulted in devastating dust storms. Author-narrator Low has very skillfully stitched together her diary entries over an approximate ten-year period (1928-38) and added commentary to fill in gaps. We learn a bit about her family history, as well as her love for the ranch country where she grew up, the oldest of three children. Low was a very independent young woman, even in her teenage years. A tomboy-ish sort who preferred wearing trousers to dresses, and loved riding her horses around the ranch, Ann Marie did a man's share of the ranch work, unlike her younger sister, Ethel, who'd been spoiled and coddled from an early age, due to an early-diagnosed heart murmur. (Although Ann Marie never complains about this, Ethel comes across as a slacker and a taker, who never pitched in to help during the oppressively hard times, instead impulsively changing her mind multiple times about where she wanted to go to college and putting her hard-working parents and siblings deeper into debt.) Their younger brother, Bud, was a very hard worker, who worked his own way through college, as did the author, who also maintained high grades and earned scholarships, later becoming a school teacher.

There are happy times here and there throughout too. Low talks of a close family, which included her grandmother and uncles nearby. Despite her trousers and independent ways, Ann Marie has several eager suitors and marriage proposals. She enjoys dating and socializing, going to dances and movies, but tells them all up front that she's not interested in marrying. But she finally does marry, after a few years of teaching, and after her parents have lost the ranch. Sadly, at least according to her narrative, she says nothing of love, although there are two children before her husband goes off to serve in WWII, as does her brother.

DUST BOWL DIARY is a fascinating peep into the past, which often called up stories told by my mother, who also got through college during the Depression years via scholarships and jobs. I also thought of another marvelous memoir called MY OWN TWO FEET, by children's author Beverly Cleary, from that same generation. Low's book is, I think, a minor classic of its kind. I'm glad I read it. Highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, REED CITY BOY. ( )

2194 Dust Bowl Diary, by Ann Marie Low (read 11 Mar 1989) This book is centered on a diary which the author began in 1927, when she was 15 and a farm girl in North Dakota and which she quit keeping in 1937. She worked very hard and lived in grinding poverty. I found reading this book quite an experience--she did get thru Jamestown (ND) College and then taught school. She fended off marriage proposals, and never in the book says a good word about the man she married--who was courting her thru the last years she was keeping the diary. He came to the area as an employee having to do with a CCC camp in the area of the author's father's farm. The July 1976 National Geographic has a story on her uncle Grover's farm. Her brother joined the Marine Corps in 1938 and years later killed himself. One of the guys who joined with him told of his experiences in a book called The Dyess Story. This is quite a book, unpretentious as it holds itself out to be. (On 27 July 2008 I read The Dyess Story and wrote my reaction to it and posted said note on LibraryThing.) ( )