Like Dust, I Rise by local author Ginny Rorby
“Like Dust, I Rise” by local author Ginny Rorby is the story of Winona in 1928, who wakes to the sound of a hit-and-run driver killing a young boy on her street in Chicago. She lives near the pig pens, the thousands of cows, and the train tracks. It’s the inner city. Winona, or Nona, sees a picture in the newspaper of Amelia Earhart and decides she wants to be a pilot too. Her Papa works at the slaughter yard, killing hogs every day, and he’s sick of it. He wants to grow wheat on the prairie of Texas. Both he and Nona have their ambitions.
He doesn’t know what he’s getting into with tornadoes, dust storms, and multiplying rabbits that eat his garden. Author Rorby paints a vivid picture of the harshness of life on the dry plains. She was inspired by the Ken Burns film of the Dust Bowl in the Depression years. Rorby also enlarges the characters of the family: Nona, Owie, her brother and Owen, her father and Glenny, her mother, and Gracie’s newest member of the family.
Papa and Mister Anderson, an oldster who has lived there for many years, build a small shack and a shed to start their new lives. Glenny has another baby, a girl, Katy, who brings joy to them. Folks have dust, pneumonia, and cough all night, keeping the family awake. Papa is a dreamer and donates money to a rainmaker, and Mama laughs at him. They burn cow patties, tumbleweeds, and odd sticks that Owie collects to stay warm. They think about tearing the wallpaper off the walls to burn it, too but don’t.
Nona never forgets her dream of being a pilot, not even when a young man comes to dinner and laughs at her ambition. After dust storms, locusts come, thousands of them. When the air show comes to town, Papa takes her, and she pays five dollars to go up in a plane with Nancy Love. She realizes flying is what she really wants to do with her life. Author Rorby was an airline stewardess for twenty-three years, and perhaps this inspired the Nona of her story. Otherwise, this is entirely fictional. Mama leaves their home in Texas to live with a sister as she can’t take Papa’s crazy plans any longer. They even have to shoot a young pony because of a broken leg, which devastates Nona.
Does she eventually return home? Is Papa finally successful growing wheat on the Texas prairie? Does Nona realize her dream of flying? Do the weather problems overcome them in the end? Find this wonderfilled young adult book at your local library and enjoy it no matter your age.