I'm so glad that this was republished and I'm so MAD that the author was only 24 when it first came out. Just kidding, I'm only entirely jealous of her talent. The setting is so bleak and the setting is so dense, it might take a while to get through, but I think it's worth it.

There is no real ending here. . .and where there is no real ending, hope is free to spring eternal. This read is about the journey; its fictional story in roots so real a reader can remember its scars in their own family tree, or at least something similarly devastating. The scars and sufferings of poverty and hardship don't hide in families - they are ever present, even in the generations who overcome that particular challenge. The devastating coping mechanisms proliferate forward through the future.

I grew to worry over Margaret, and now after the read, am still hoping for her. Of all the ways to escape. . .most often the best is to run away. I hope she moved away, but my guess is she stood her ground to see what the next waves brought.

A Sincere Thank You to Josephine Johnson, Scribner and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review

Now in November by Josephine W. Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1935 making her the youngest person ever to do so.
It was republished in 2022 with this beautiful cover art which attracted me to the book.
I’ve been slowly working my way through all the Pulitzer Prize winners although I’m not in a formal Pulitzer reading group as some of my fellow bookstagrammers are.
It’s a beautiful account of a farming family surviving during the horrific dust bowl years told by one of the daughters.
It reminded me a bit of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, also a Pulitzer winner in 1989, which is a loose re-telling of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The narrator of Now in November, Margot, actually mentions King Lear.
I’m not sure how this book fell out of fashion. It’s not the go to Depression story like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath which won a Pulitzer in 1940 but it should be.
Recommended.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

First published in 1934, this debut book of a 24 year old writer that also won the Pulitzer Prize, astounds me just how remarkable a work of fiction it truly is.

4☆

What a beautiful and sad book! A gem indeed! It tells the story of the Harbornes, a family with three sisters who move to a farm where things are never easy. Papa struggles each year to pay the mortgage, and eldest sister Kerrin is unpredictable and fiery. But mother's easy faith offers sustaining hope and the the youngest sister Merle's straightforward, happy nature delights them all. Middle child Margret, our narrator, is the quiet, diligent observer. Most of the novel, centers on one year, where things change from hard to nearly impossible. Beginning in May, Margret describes as hope goes to fear then to desperation as the drought hits. They continue to work hard but are helpless to stop their food and livelihood from burning away in the relentless sun and being buried under dust. But the year is also memorable for the arrival of Grant as their hired help who falls in the love with the only sister who doesn't fall in love with him. As tragedies accumulate, Margret must figure out how to keep going when all hope seems lost.
This book provides an honest and heartbreaking account of a family living through the Dust Bowl while also surviving the hurts and complicated relationships that can exist at any time. Johnson became a nature writer later in life, and her love and ability to describe the natural world are well on display here. This book is sad and it does not sugarcoat how the Dust Bowl destroyed lives. But it also manages to find some cracked beauty in that life.
It deserves to be rediscovered!

I am obsessed with Great Depression and Dust Bowl and have read many books about it. It’s so inspiring how they managed to struggle to get by on so little.

This book was like reading a poem, so beautiful.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book.

"A lost gem of twentieth-century literature, Josephine Johnson's 1934 Pulitzer Prize - winning "exquisite…heartbreakingly real" (The New York Times Book Review) novel follows a year in the life of a family struggling to survive the Dust Bowl.

Published when Josephine Johnson was only twenty-four years old, Now in November made Johnson the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1935. It is a beautifully told account of one farming family's challenges to scrape by and earn a living from mortgaged land over the course of a single year, narrated by one of three sisters - the introspective and thoughtful Margaret. As the household is ravaged by Depression-era hardship and the environmental blights of the Dust Bowl, the family’s unique vulnerabilities are pushed to a breaking point.

In a style typical of Johnson’s body of work, Now in November is strikingly ahead of its time, grappling with questions of mental health, worker’s rights, as well as gender, race, and class and is ready to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers."

Obsessed with the Dust Bowl. Totally and uttering obsessed.