Soft Hearts and Hard Times is the true story of a little boy who's age of awareness coincided with beginning of the Great Depression. It tells the story of how he and his family endured; and how the dismal events of the day affected them. It demonstrates how, even in the worst of times, there is still time for a boyish pleasure or two.

Living in a broken world gives us plenty of reasons to armor up, shut down, and numb out. But God wants more for us than just getting by. When we harden ourselves to the world, we not only close ourselves off from the good things God intends for us but close off avenues God wants to work through in others' lives as well. With deep empathy and encouragement, writer Charaia Rush invites us to experience the countercultural path of staying open and vulnerable to the goodness of God and the miracle of staying tender in a tough world that only God can bring about. In Courageously Soft she helps you to · identify the root of a hardened heart · move from fearful self-preservation to the hope of being held · recognize God's presence in the midst of pain · replace denial, shutting down, and closing off with abiding trust in God's love and care If you have been feeling exhausted, bitter, or beaten down by disappointment, betrayal, or suffering, this grace-filled book will help you find your way back to a posture of love, trust, and hope.

A mystery novel starring amateur sleuth Rett Swinson, who investigates the stabbing death of her neighbor, Wanda Hightower, on Halloween.

Despite the title, Dickens’s portrayal of early industrial society here is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love, of Sissy the circus girl with love to spare who is deserted and adopted into their family, and of the honest mill worker Stephen Blackpool and the bombastic mill owner Josiah Bounderby. The key contrasts created are finally less those between wealth and poverty, or capitalists and workers, than those between the head and the heart, between “Fact”—the cold, rationalistic approach to life that Dickens associates with utilitarianism—and “Fancy”—a warmth of the imagination and of the feelings, which values individuals above ideas. Concentrated and compressed in its narrative form, Hard Times is at once a fable, a novel of ideas, and a social novel that seeks to engage directly and analytically with political issues. The central conflicts raised in the text, between government’s duty not to intervene to guarantee the liberty of the subject, and between quantitative and qualitative assessments of progress, remain unresolved today in the late or post industrial stages of liberal democracies.

No area of the United States was untouched by the Great Depression, but the severity in which people experienced those significant years depended in large part on where in the nation they lived. While dust choked the life out of Americans in the plains, apples grew in abundance in the Northwest. Unemployment-driven poverty robbed urban dwellers of hearth and home, while Upper-plains farm women traded eggs and chickens like money. This bibliography describes the youth literature and relevant resources written about the Great Depression, all categorized by geographical location. Students, educators, historians, and writers can use this book to find literature specific to their state or region, gaining a greater understanding of what the Great Depression was like in their locale. The Great Depression was a pivotal period in our nation's history. This annotated bibliography guides readers to biographies; oral histories, memoirs, and recollections; photograph collections; fiction and nonfiction books; picture books; international resources; and other reference sources. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) state guides are included, as well as literature about the federal theater, arts, and music projects. A comprehensive listing of museums and state historical societies complement this reference. For readers interested in learning about the Great Depression, this is a must-have resource.