Review: The Hired Man

The Hired Man by Sandra Dallas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars





This was a fine novel that combined the history of the Dust Bowl, hoboes, and several large mysteries. It also gave us a look into how people felt about hoboes (I assume that this was what we now call the homeless). This was the height of the depression, and men were wandering the country looking for work. Poor, dirty, downtrodden, most were aimless. And they were the ones who took the blame when anything went wrong in a town they happened to be in.

The Kessler family came upon a hobo named Otis when he saved a boy from a dust blizzard. This story is told using Martha Helen Kessler's (daughter) thoughts and words.

The only problem that kept me from giving this book a 5-star rating was that, even though this was the height of the Dust Bowl, the Kesslers lived on a farm that wasn't making any money, and it was the Great Depression, they always seemed to have more than anyone else. They had more food, clothing, money...why was that?

The mystery (both of them) took me quite by surprise; pleasantly so. I love how authors write things like this that don't work out the way you assumed they would go!

This may be a very good novel for book clubs because of the historical elements, the mystery, and the town's reaction to Otis.

*ARC supplied by the publisher St. Martin's Press/Macmillan Publishers, the author, and NetGalley.


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SUMMARY: "The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect

1937. It’s been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. Even so, evidence of the Dust Bowl’s grim impact on families, especially on the women who bear the brunt of their husbands’ frustration and their children’s hunger, is everywhere.

When Martha Helen’s compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, she quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Suspicion, jealousy, and prejudice grip their neighbors–and emotions reach a frenzy after Martha Helen’s best friend, Frankie, disappears and is then found murdered. Ultimately, Martha Helen is forced to make sense of her conflicting feelings and loyalties in order to help find retribution and to reconcile the difference between the law and justice.

Full of period detail and Sandra Dallas’s trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.