Bookn' with Friends: "Whose Names Are Unknown" by Sanora Babb

WPL's Bookn' With Friends adult book club is starting out the year with a forgotten classic, Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb.  Selected to meet the 2026 Reading Challenge "a classic," this novel was originally written and slated for publication in 1939. Random House shelved the manuscript when The Grapes of Wrath met with wide acclaim, believing that Steinbeck had adequately explored the subject matter. Babb's lyrical novel about a farm family's relentless struggle to survive in both Depression-era Oklahoma and in the California migrant labor camps gathered dust for decades before it was rescued from obscurity by the University of Oklahoma Press.  Babb, a native of Oklahoma and a volunteer with the Farm Security Administration in Depression-era California, brings an insider's knowledge and immediacy to this authentically compelling narrative.  Whose Names Are Unknown is 222 pages and has a 4.1 rating on Goodreads.

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"Prairie Print Makers" art display, on loan from the USD 465 Foundation

"Life in Kansas During the Dust Bowl" a Humanities Kansas presentation by Katie Keckeisen on Saturday, January 24 at 10:00am