Mar 26, 2022

Depression Era Oklahoma Literature

The Grapes of Wrath did not stand as the only powerful fiction literature about Dust Bowl and Depression-Era Oklahoma. Lawton newspaper reporter Alice Lent Covert penned Return to Dust, the gritty tale of a Dust Bowl-ravaged Panhandle family and town. Okeene native William Cunningham, acclaimed author of The Green Corn Rebellion, also wrote the Robin Hood-style saga of Charles Floyd, Pretty Boy. The greatest work, which stood at or near the equal of Steinbeck’s, and excelled it for excitement and suspenseful action, was Edwin Lanham’s The Stricklands. It spun the tale of other fictional Cookson Hills brothers. One defied the injustice of the times through a union, and the other with a gun. The New York Times wrote of it: “There is no book to lay beside it for comparison. The best elements of a labor story, of crime provoked through ignorance, of tragic love, and of family loyalty have been fused in the same book.”