Karen Hesse: Hi. This is Karen Hesse and I'm the author of Out of the Dust. Thirteen years ago, when this project began, I didn't set out to write a novel about the dirty '30s, and the Great Depression. In fact, I was working on a picture book about a little girl named Tess, living in an urban setting, during a miserably hot, dry summer.

The catch phrase the picture book was come on, rain. When I read that manuscript to my writer's group, Adeline Crystal, who can be a fairly demanding critic asked, "Why does the little girl want rain so much?"

That started me thinking about times throughout history when people really wanted rain and before I knew it, I put the picture book aside and found myself elbow deep in research about Oklahoma dust.

Because of Adeline's question that day, in the end, two books emerged. The picture book, Come on Rain, and the novel, Out of the Dust. I'd like to read an excerpt from Out of the Dust for you now. The novel is written as a poetry cycle rather than as straight narrative prose, so it may sound a little different when read aloud.

The poem I'd like to share with you appears about midway through the book and documents one of the rare rainfalls that momentarily soothed the fevered brows of the Dust Bowl during those long, dry years.

First Rain.

Sunday night, I stretch my legs in my iron bed, under the roof. I place a wet cloth over my nose to keep from breathing dust and wipe the grim tracings from around my mouth and shiver, thinking of Ma. I'm kept company by the sound of my heart, drumming.

Restless, I tangle in the dusty sheets, sending the sand flying, cursing the grit against my skin, between my teeth, under my lids, swearing I'll leave this forsaken place. I hear the first drops, like the tapping of a stranger, at the door of a dream.

The rain changes everything. It strokes the roof, streaking the dusty tin, pounding a concert of rain notes, spilling some gutters, gushing through gullies, soaking into the thirsty Earth outside.

Monday morning dawn's cloaked in mist. I button into my dress, slip on my sweater, and push my way off the porch, sticking my face into the fog, into the moist skin of the fog. The sound of dripping surrounds me as I walk to town.

Soaked to my underwear, I can't bear to go through the schoolhouse door. I want only to stand in the rain. Monday afternoon, Joe Delafleur brushes mud from his floor. Mr. Kincannon hires my father to pull his Olds out of the muck on Route 64 and later, when the clouds lift, the farmers surveying their fields nod their heads as the frail stalks revive.

Everyone, everything grateful for this moment, free of the weight of dust. January 1935.