Personal recollections recreate experiences of two Dust Bowl communities.

A darkling plain. The black blizzards roll in ; If it rains ; Okies and exodusters -- Prelude to dust. What holds the earth together ; Sodbusting -- Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Frontier in ruins ; When the cattle ate tumbleweeds ; Hard times in the Panhandle -- Haskell County, Kansas. Unsettled ground ; The wheat farmer and the welfare state ; A sense of place -- A New Deal for the land. Facing up to limits ; Learning from nature ; Make two blades of grass grow ; Epilogue : on a thin edge.