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“Are the little people real?” Dorothy asked as she carefully placed her bunch of flowers on the step. She was fascinated by the ancient Irish traditions and the stories Emily told her.

Emily wasn’t sure if she should fill the child’s head with notions of fairy folk, but she remembered something of being a young girl and believing in something magical. “Of course they’re real. But only very lucky people ever see them.”

Emily and Henry talked about little else now.

What Dorothy was thinking, doing, feeling consumed every thought and conversation.

They often disagreed on the best course of action, at odds with each other in a way they had never been before.

Emily hated it when they argued. Henry blamed the high temperatures for their short tempers.

The heavy heat of the day lingered long after sundown, leaving the air inside the house still and stagnant.

“Everyone is hot and irritable,” he said. “A good downpour will bring us to our senses. Heard talk of a rainmaker over in Dalhart last week. Maybe he’ll make his way to us soon.”

Emily tutted. “Rainmakers! Never heard such nonsense. They’re no better than carnival showmen with their tricks and illusions.

” She’d heard of these men launching sticks of dynamite into the sky tied to balloons, peddling their dubious science to susceptible crowds.

“Desperate folk will believe anything,” she said.

“There’s only one man with the power to make it rain, Henry. And He seems to have forgotten us.”

Yet despite her skepticism, she understood the allure of the rainmakers and the willingness of farmers to believe in their promises. Without rain, the crops wouldn’t grow. Without rain, the parched topsoil blew.

And that meant dust.

All across the Great Plains, folk were reporting more and more of the awful dusters and black blizzards, great clouds of earth that rolled across the prairie, spewing dust and dirt over farms and towns, choking people half to death.

Even on days when the dusters didn’t roll, there was no escaping it.

When Emily ran her hands through her hair she felt the grit with her fingertips, like sandpaper against her scalp.

Sometimes she thought she would go mad, but no amount of washing or bathing got rid of it.

When she swept the floor, a fine gritty film settled again within an hour.

If she cleaned a plate and set it on the table, it was speckled with dust by the time dinner was out of the stove.

Dust crept through the wet rags and newspapers they stuffed against the windows and doors.

It seeped into the damp cloths they held to their mouths and noses.

Sometimes she felt she would suffocate beneath it.

Even when Emily picked up her father’s fiddle, she couldn’t catch a clear note, the bow scratching horribly over the strings.

She blamed the dust. She blamed the dust for everything lately.

But even worse than the dust Emily could see was the dust she couldn’t.

Animals were falling sick and dying from dust fever, and prairie folk were dying from dust pneumonia caused by a layer of dust settling deep in their lungs.

The prairie was slowly choking them, killing them from the inside.

And still the rain didn’t come, and tempers remained as frayed as an unstitched hem on a feed sack dress.

As Emily watched Dorothy playing with her few toys, she worried that she’d brought her to the worst place on earth.

That evening, as she got ready for Thursday supper club, Emily stared at her reflection in the hand mirror. She hardly recognized the stern, world-weary person looking back. There was no color there, no joy. The vibrant determined woman who’d thrived here in their first few summers had faded away.

She’d known that life here would be tough, but she could never have imagined just how hard it would be.

Nobody had ever known it this bad. Not even the old-timers.

It was a test for them all. Almost like a physical pain, she yearned for the life she’d known before the drought and dust and—if she dared to admit it—before the added responsibility and worry about Dorothy.

She longed for something to change, for rain and color to return to the prairie, for a sense of joy to return to her life.

Desperate and afraid, she looked to the sky and prayed for help, for guidance.

“Show me,” she whispered. “Give me a sign that everything will be all right.”

—

Although she was weary, she was glad to spend time with the other women at their weekly supper club. It was a relief to leave Dorothy with Henry for a few hours, and she already felt a little lighter as she drove the Model T into Liberal.

They spent the evening talking about the approaching county fair and the barnstormers Hank had seen practicing over Ike West’s farm.

“Couldn’t have picked a worse place in all of Kansas,” May Lucas joked. “Mina West will have them arrested for trespassing.”

“I’m not sure you can trespass in the sky!” Emily said.

May rolled her eyes. “I’m quite sure Mina West thinks she owns the damn sky, as well as most of the town.”

Emily laughed. “They’re such an odd pair, aren’t they? The other sister never seems to leave the house. What does she do all day?”

“Who cares,” Laurie said. “They only cause trouble when they’re around.”

“I do feel a bit sorry for them, rattling around that big old farmhouse. Do you think we should invite them to join us one evening?”

Everyone stared at Emily, a look of shock on their faces.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she said.

As the women talked, they kept their hands busy, making dresses from empty flour or feed sacks.

The Gingham Girl Flour sacks were the most popular.

All the girls liked those dresses the best. Others wore dresses made from sacks patterned with cornflowers, primroses, or checks.

Emily had learned quickly that nothing was wasted on the prairie, and that even for the child of the poorest family, a pretty sack dress could bring a much-needed smile.

Dorothy had asked Emily to make her a sack dress, even though she had several perfectly good cotton dresses.

She said she wanted to be like the other girls at school.

As Emily sewed the stiff fabric, she thought about the expensive silk her mother used to work with as a dressmaker for Marshall Field’s.

There was something admirable about these simple homemade thrift dresses, with many hours of care, sacrifice, and love sewn into them.

“Well, ladies,” Laurie said eventually. “Let’s say another prayer for rain before we finish up. Surely the heavens will answer soon.”

“Henry was telling me about another of those rainmakers, out Dalhart way, performing his tricks,” Emily said.

“Hank was talking about it, too. Reckons he’s going to raise a collection to pay for one to come here,” Laurie said.

“You don’t believe in it, do you?” Emily asked. “Secret ingredients to conjure moisture? TNT and nitroglycerine exploding to create rain? I’m sure it’s just swindlers taking advantage of desperate folk, telling them what they want to believe.”

Laurie let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, but if it takes a stick of dynamite to bring the rain and stop those damn dusters rolling through, I’ll believe anything they tell me.”

The women held their hands in prayer and asked the Lord for rain and a good harvest and higher prices, and to keep them all safe from dusters and tornadoes.

On the way home, Emily looked to the cloudless skies and the ripe summer sun sinking low on the horizon and prayed again for a miracle, for the sky to give them something—anything—other than this relentless suffocating heat and dust. Surely the rain would come soon.

As she turned onto the track toward the house, Dorothy came running to meet her.

“Auntie Em! Auntie Em! Come and see!”

Emily pulled the motorcar to a stop and jumped out, her heart racing. “Is it Henry? What’s happened? Why aren’t you in bed?”

“There’s a lady! And a real airplane! In the barn! She says I can go up in it!”

Emily told the child to stop talking nonsense.

“It’s true! I saw her fall right out of the sky. Come and see!” Dorothy grabbed Emily by the arm and practically dragged her toward the barn.

“Goodness, child. Slow down!”

As Emily reached the barn door, she could hardly believe what she saw.

Dorothy wasn’t talking nonsense. There was a plane. And a woman, standing beside it.

Emily cleared her throat. Dorothy stood at her side, jumping up and down with excitement.

The woman turned, put down an oilcan, and stepped forward. A warm smile spread across crimson lips as her eyes met Emily’s.

“You must be Auntie Em!” She thrust out a hand. “Adelaide Watson. Real pleased to meet you, Mrs.Gale! This little firecracker here has told me all about you!”