The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression

Sanora Babb spent her life dealing with all the multifarious daily perils that prevent writers from writing. She was raised in poverty by a mother who was only 16 when she gave birth to her and an abusive father who spent his days playing semi-pro baseball and gambling. From the age she could walk, she was running errands for her parents’ bakery and, later, helping them raise crops until drought put their mortgaged farm out of business. She rarely had time for school (or even enjoyed easy access to one) and learned to read from pages of The Denver Post that were pasted to the crude walls of their dugout home in East Colorado. (Her father described the place as looking “like a grave.”)