Book excerpt: The Great Depression is a period that most young people consider ancient history, but their own grandparents probably remember it well, for the country was in shock and nothing afterward was ever the same. This story, told through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl, is an account of what it was like in those dust-bowl days when thousands of people migrated west in search of the promised land: California. Whole families made the trek across Route 66, and their children went with them. One of them was Meg Buckland. Evicted from their home in Missouri, Meg and her father made their way westward in search of a future they could hardly imagine. But like many others they had dreams of a land where there would be jobs, and pay, and a new home. And maybe even some of those fantastic joys described in the popular song "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." It's safe to say that nothing turned out as they expected.