The Great Depression on the Farm, a guest post by Charlotte Whitney, author of A Tiny Piece of Blue

Today I'm welcoming author Charlotte Whitney, who has a guest essay about the historical background to her new novel, A Tiny Piece of Blue.

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The Great Depression on the Farm

Charlotte Whitney

At its best historical fiction is totally immersive. Readers become so involved in the story that they feel they are right there in the same room with the characters, mentally encouraging them to take a certain path or, conversely, discouraging flawed characters from decisions with disastrous consequences. My readers expect this from me, and I attempt to delight  as well as educate readers regarding a particular period of history.

However, I mentioned the reader being in the same “room” with the characters. Many of the settings in my books are not rooms but a variety of farm locations. A section or chapter might take place in a barn, field, silo, chicken house,  milk house, or hay loft--or a one-room country school, barn dance, or the midway of a county fair. All of these locations have been settings in one or another of my novels which are set in the rural farmland of south-central Michigan during the Great Depression. 

A Tiny Piece of Blue, February 2025

Many readers enjoy the familiarity of the dust storms of the Great Depression touchingly depicted by John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939) and more recently by Kristin Hannah in The Four Winds (2021). These are amazing books, and I encourage you to read them. However, because the devastating dust storms didn’t hit southern Michigan with the same ferocity of other plains states, readers tend to be less familiar with my settings. Nevertheless, Michigan was not immune from the vagaries of weather and economics during the depression. Droughts, along with plummeting dairy, beef, pork, and egg prices caused many farm foreclosures. Farmers found themselves homeless and unless they had family willing to take them in, they joined the minions setting out for a better life, often California-bound.

My Childhood Family Farm with Red Barns

I grew up on a farm in Calhoun County, Michigan as did my parents, and both sets of grandparents. Before them were immigrants from England, Ireland, and Germany who all had dreams of a better life. Calhoun County encompasses Battle Creek, Marshall, Albion and some smaller towns and villages. But it was farmland when the immigrants settled, and all my grandparents and great-grandparents were indigent family farmers. My mother remembered the log cabin that was originally the family homestead, long since replaced not once, but subsequently by two houses on the same site. The family stories are rich with both fact and emotion. However, not all stories were passed down, particularly those of failure and heartbreak. No letters were kept, save the missives home from two great-great uncles who were Union soldiers in the Civil War. Nevertheless, when starting my research, I chose to start with those stories closest to my heart—those of my family.

My mother Mary Whitney with her sister and her pet lamb

When a child, my mother had a pet lamb that she loved. It was soft, cuddly and tagged along with her wherever she went. Ironically, my mother’s name was Mary. However, one year during the Depression my grandparents struggled to have enough to eat, and my mom’s precious lamb was slaughtered. From that day on my mother would eat anything that was on the table—some days squirrel, rabbit, or wild boar, but she NEVER ever ate lamb.

Photos of Calhoun County Fair in the 1930s
(courtesy of the Calhoun County Agricultural and Industrial Society)

A Tiny Piece of Blue contains several dramatic scenes from the 1935 Calhoun County Fair. Vernon passes by members of the Pottawatomi tribe selling quill baskets at the entrance to the fair and experiences a wave of regret he never purchased one for Edna. Similarly thirteen-year-old Silstice finds herself at the top of the Ferris Wheel and looks down to see her two younger brothers held hostage and struggling to pull free from their captors. Likewise Vernon observes families picnicking at Fair Lake, formerly named The Duck Pond. The places are authentic and make colorful, dramatic settings.

In one scene of A Tiny Piece of Blue Vernon surprises Silstice and her sister Alberta with a Saturday night barn dance. He mentions that barn dances only happen in June when haylofts are cleared out and before they are filled up again at hay-baling time, usually around the 4th of July. This, of course, is true for Calhoun County, Michigan. The hay season farther south would be earlier and farther north would be later.

I’ve heard from a great number of older Midwestern readers who comment on the “authentic” nature of my historical novels. I strive for that plus a superb story which keeps the reader turning pages, desperate to reach the end, yet never wanting the book to ever end. That paradox remains my goal.

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Charlotte Whitney’s next book, A Tiny Piece of Blue, will be released February 18, 2025. It can be pre-ordered here: https://charlottewhitney.com/pre-order