Out of the Dust

By Karen Hesse (1997)

Poetry 

There is one thing Billie Jo loves more than anything else – playing the piano. As her family struggles through the Great Depression and the Oklahoma dust storms, Billie Jo finds joy in this. Until one day, the unthinkable happens.

Her mother and baby brother are dead and it’s her fault. Her father has shut down. The crops have dried up and the fields have turned to dust. And if all that isn’t enough, the fire that destroyed her family destroyed her hands.

“I don’t say

It hurts like the parched earth with each note.

I don’t say,

One chord and

my hands scream with pain for days.

I don’t show him

the swelling

or my tears.

I tell him, ‘I’ll try.’

At home, I sit at

Ma’s piano,

I don’t touch the keys.

I don’t know why.”

Billi Jo has a lot she could run from – or a lot she could make peace with. This Newberry Award winner models how to stay strong in the face of adversity; because, just like Billie Jo, we can’t “get out of the dust” when it makes us who we are. “And what I am is good enough. Even for me.”