The backstory is more interesting than the novel. Babb was working in an FSA migrant camp during the depression, helping migrant workers in their struggle to work and live. One day a well-known journalist visited the camp, and Babb’s boss asked her to share some of her notes with the writer, in the hope that an article and publicity would generate support for their work. She did. She was also working on a novel of her own. The journalist borrowed her notebook. His name was John Steinbeck, and some months later, “The Grapes of Wrath” was published. By then, Babb’s manuscript, which had been accepted for publication, was cancelled… editor Bennett Cerf told her they didn’t need another migrant-worker saga now. This is her novel, finally published in 2004.

It’s not bad. Moving among several dry land farm families on the plains, beset by drought and dust storms, predatory banks, impoverishment, hunger, and helplessness, it touches on pretty much all the same themes as Grapes. It’s Willa-Cather-ish in some lyrical descriptions of the landscape, and the sheer loneliness and menace of the life these homesteaders live, as well as their care and help for each other. The treatment of these laboring people by the bosses and growers is an atrocity, producing despair, suicide, and early deaths.

But Babb is not Steinbeck. The families are almost indistinguishable, characters wooden. And her language never soars to the level of myth or Biblical tragedy as his does…though the suicide of a shopkeeper comes close. Two awful childbirth scenes, both producing dead infants, is overkill. Two sexual encounters are maudlin and coy. Conversations among the characters become infodumps or lectures delivered as set pieces. I found myself skimming the last pages, just to finish.

Interesting but not captivating. Competent but rarely impressive. Even as Steinbeck used Babb’s in-the-trenches work to build his own novel and beat her to the punch, his is still the great one. Cerf was probably right. ( )

This novel depicts the lives and struggles of Oklahoma farmers in the Depression and Dust Bowl drought, and their westwards migration to California in search of work. If that sounds like a plot summary of The Grapes of Wrath, that's because it is. This novel had the misfortune to be written and considered for publication just at the same time that Steinbeck's masterpiece hit the shelves and sold the best part of half a million copies over the next five months, so "obviously, another book at this time about exactly the same subject would be a sad anticlimax!”, in the publisher's words. The novel didn't see the light of day for another two thirds of a century and was published in 2004, a year before the author's death at the age of 98. It is a shorter novel than Steinbeck's and its prose has a starker simplicity and portrays with somewhat greater clarity the sufferings of the families, especially the central family of the Dunnes. We learn much more about the Dunnes' lives in Oklahoma than we do those of Steinbeck's Joads - two thirds of this book is set in Oklahoma, as opposed to only the start of Steinbeck's, and there is less focus here on the actual journey westwards. That said, I would say that Babb's characters are less memorable than the Joads, and for me at least, I would say that this novel pulled somewhat less of a personal emotional punch.

During the Great Depression, Milt and Julia Dunne and their two young girls are struggling to survive the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. They, along with a neighboring family, travel to California, where they become migrant workers. They eventually join the labor movement.

This book has an unusual backstory. It was scheduled for publication in 1939. However, it was shelved after John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published to wide acclaim earlier that year, since they are similar in plot. It was eventually published in 2004 when the author was ninety-seven. It takes its title from eviction notices in the Depression era.

I have now read both books. This one is more closely focused on the family’s travails and their daily interactions, whereas Steinbeck’s novel is a sweeping epic with dramatic set pieces. I see them as complementary.

As a side note, this book would make excellent reading for authors writing historical fiction set in the Great Depression era. This author lived through it and wrote this book contemporaneously.
( )

It is the late 1930s and the country is still in the throes of the Great Depression. On top of that, the Oklahoma panhandle is plagued by drought and dust storms of historic proportions. The wheat farmers in the region, who struggle to make ends meet in the best of times, are becoming increasingly desperate as their crops have been wiped out for several seasons in a row. Tired of the hunger, illness, and abject poverty they face on a daily basis, many families give up and migrate to California where they hope to establish better lives. Instead, they find nothing but disillusionment in the Golden State, where they are met with contempt, humiliation, and violence from the local farm owners. Told from one family’s perspective, this is a story of the struggle to maintain one’s dignity and basic humanity in the face of almost overwhelming economic deprivation.

So, you may be thinking “Wait, I know this book—The Grapes of Wrath, right?” Well, no, but it almost was. Rather, this is the basic outline of Sanora Babb’s Whose Names Are Unknown, which was written at virtually the same instant as John Steinbeck’s classic work. However, because Babb was an unproven novelist who lacked Steinbeck's star power, her novel was not published at the time; in fact, her original publisher reneged on a contract to produce the book, fearing competition with such a notable rival. To make matters worse, it languished in manuscript form for another 65 years before finally being brought to a wider audience!

That is a real shame because while the two novels are very similar in the subject matter they cover, they do tell somewhat different versions of the story. I actually preferred Steinbeck’s detailed, well-paced, and sweeping approach, but I did appreciate Babb’s concise tale that focuses far more on personal relationships, particularly those involving the younger and female characters. It is also less heavy-handed in terms of its political motivation, which can feel a little dated to the modern reader. Still, if you have read The Grapes of Wrath, you will probably feel like you already know what Whose Names Are Unknown is all about, which makes it difficult to recommend without some reservation. ( )

This book closely examines how the events of the dust bowl affects the Dunne family. It starts by showing how they are eking out a living as farmers in the Oklahoma panhandle. They have neighbors who are doing better than them, but then they are doing better than some. Their one room dugout is cramped but they still rejoice in the hope a new baby brings when Mrs. Dunne discovers she is pregnant. But then the drought and storms start to come, Mrs. Dunne loses the baby, and they are forced to think about abandoning their farm just so they can survive. Just like refugees all throughout history, they pack up their car and head west. As they go from camp to camp following the crops that need to be picked, they are mistreated, called names, and cheated over and over again.
This book is a serious look at the hardships of the dust bowl, and as such it is not an easy read. Yet is is a powerful portrayal of those times and the issues faced, and our book group found a lot to talk about after we read it, even though most of us struggled to get through it. ( )

You may already know the story of Whose Names Are Unknown and its path to publication. If so, you may wish to skip the next paragraph. I'm including it because I found it fascinating. Truly, it's the primary reason I picked this novel up.

In the 1930s, author Sanora Babb was working as a volunteer for the Farm Security Administration in California. She helped in the camps for displaced farmers. Under the recommendation of Tom Collins, the same Collins who served as the primary source for The Grapes of Wrath, Babb began to compile notes about her experience. Twice, she crossed paths with John Steinbeck. Babb went on to write about the workers and the camps in Whose Names Are Unknown. In 1939, she found a publisher for the novel in Random House. All was set. Then The Grapes of Wrath became a sensation. It won the Pulitzer. It won the National Book Award. It was the best selling book of the year. And suddenly, Random House was no longer interested (though they did pay her). In fact, no publisher wanted anything to do with Babb's novel. All knew it would be viewed at best as an anti-climatic follow-up to Steinbeck's novel, at worst a horrible imitation. So Whose Names Are Unknown remained unpublished and unknown until it was picked up by a university press, sixty-five years later, in 2004.

Since its publication, there has been some question as to whether one writer was trying to trying to capitalize off the other's project. Some question as to whether one writer used the other's notes. Personally, I think both were just moved by the situation and had the same great idea at the same time. Unfortunately for Babb, her time came a tad too late.

Undoubtedly, there is quite a bit of similarity between the two novels. Both focus on an Oklahoman family, despite the fact that the Dust Bowl affected other states as well. Both show their journey to California, bouncing around from camp to camp. Both show the desperation of a family being pushed to its limits. While I strongly feel Whose Names Are Unknown stands on its own, I agree with the publisher: at the time, it would not have had the best results.

Yet, Whose Names Are Unknown is not The Grapes of Wrath. Yes, the plots and characters are certainly similar. Even the tone of both pieces, a tone of sadness and protest, was similar. But while Steinbeck moved the Joad family out west as soon as he could, Babb took her time moving the Dunne family. While Steinbeck was much more obvious with his meandering metaphors, Babb stayed primarily focused on the central plot. While Steinbeck unleashed the longest work he'd written up to that point in his life, Babb kept her story incredibly concise. Two sides of the same coin? Yes. But both were stellar in their own regard.

As a long-time Steinbeck fan, I'm quite partial to Steinbeck. That said, Whose Names Are Unknown could've easily earned a place alongside The Grapes of Wrath in my heart, but it did fail on one regard: it was too concise. There are times when the Dunne family seems on the brink of collapse. Then the next chapter they're getting along decently. There's no bridge or explanation. This was particularly noticeable at a point in the story when the family is thrown from their small home with all their possessions. The next chapter, the family is in their kitchen with all their possessions. Was this a new home? The old? What happened? There are a few too many moments such as these that keep an observant reader asking, “what did I miss?” I can't help but wonder if word got out about Steinbeck's upcoming novel, and if there wasn't a rush to finish this one. That would certainly be a logical reason for some of the holes in the story. Even with the holes, however, the reader can surmise what happened in the in-between and not miss too much.

So fellow writers, remember the lesson of Babb and Steinbeck: while you're sitting on your wonderful idea, a muse may be handing your novel to another writer. Not that I think Babb was sitting on her idea, or made any wrong choices in the matter, but it's still a valuable lesson. No, I think the misfortunes of Whose Names Are Unknown can be chalked up to the cosmos or fate or chance or whatever you want to call it. Fortunately, we now have access to this great work, and while it may be too late for the migratory workers of the 1930s, it might be just in time for our current mounting troubles with the climate and worker's rights. Maybe the fates had reason to delay this novel's publication. ( )

Took me a really long time to get into this book. Realistic dialogue and characterization are the most important to me when reading. The dialogue in the first half of the book didn't sit with me. I felt the author was speaking to me and not a conversation between characters. The second half of the book the author seemed to get it together and I felt the writing got better. Unfortunately characterization continued to suffer. This could have been any dustbowl family in any book. Grapes of Wrath is by far the better book. ( )

Well that was depressing. Misery, starvation, and exploitation. The details about how the drought and dust bowl devastated the midwest were fascinating since I knew very little about that era. But I'm not kidding about this being a miserable read - 200 pages of hardship with not even a glimmer of hope at the end. In fact, it just ends, another day with starving mouths to feed, another penniless day without the prospect of work. No change in the weather, no hope for the future, maybe a spark of salvation in the power of striking workers. Babb obviously captures the desolation of the time but I found her writing a little child-like in places, like it was written by a high school student even though she was in her 30s when she wrote it. Might be better used as a reading assignment in high school history classes. ( )

It has been too long since I read the Grapes of Wrath to remember, aside from the one scene at the end of the woman trying to save the life of an old man. I wish I remembered better to be able to make some comparison with this novel, written by a woman who actually worked with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration of California. Her novel was to be published, as of 1939, but then Steinbeck's came out, and the publisher pulled out feeling that the market couldn't support two books on the subject.

I learned of this book during a public television documentary on the dust bowl. I don't remember the details, but, somehow Babb's notes were shared with Steinbeck and led to his novel.

Whose Names are Unknown follows mainly a single family of father, mother, grandfather, and two daughters. it is divided about in half between their life in Oklahoma and their life in California (the grandfather does not go with the rest of the family to California). It is very much a novel of daily life so you are immersed in the details of time and place. It is not a dramatic book, but the drama builds through the accumulation of daily experience and its reflection in the thoughts of the characters. The events are the depression, the drought which lead to dust storms - a result of plowing the prairie, removing the vegetation which held the topsoil in place. You really feel what it is like to live in recurring dust storms that seep into everything and destroy their hopes that this year at last there will be a good harvest.

Then there is the move to California, by the Okies and Arkies, and the response - the way they are viewed, and kept from settling down, and exploited. They are forced into a situation where they have to work for less than it takes to even eat enough. The novel ends with a strike attempt and its aftermath.

With the widening divide between rich and poor, and between rich and everyone else, that is now occurring in this country, I sometimes wonder if it could ever get that bad again, where whole families work, and still do not earn enough to even live, not to live in comfort, or in a settled place, but even to live at all. Perhaps it is already happening for some groups - such as illegal immigrants - or never stopped. I don't know. It is a grim life that Babb's describes. The people with their hopes, fears, loves and dreams are very real in the midst of being dehumanized as "Okies" by the other Californians. ( )

Ironically this book was almost unknown. In 1939 editor Bennett Cerf was finalizing publication plans for it, when John Steinbeck's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath captured national interest. Cerf mistakenly judged that Steinbeck's novel had covered the subject and shelved the manuscript. Unknown for 30 years except for an underground network of scholars, Sanora Babb's work http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/01/21/sanora_babb_98_n... now provides a welcome companion to Steinbeck's classic epic. In certain aspects, Babb's novel is more realistic and insightful. Having worked as a journalist for a few years during the Depression in the Farm Security Administration (FCA) at government migrant camps in California, Babb's writing shows a deeper understanding of the displaced people's lives. She also provides a female viewpoint of that turbulent and challenging era. Steinbeck devoted much of his book to the male view and details of the road trip to California. Similar to Steinbeck, Babb setup her novel's basis with the story of the Dunne family's dust bowl farm experience in the Oklahoma panhandle. When the Dunne's are finally forced to leave, she quickly moves them to California, fieldwork, and their mistreatment as migrant workers. Like Steinbeck, she sympathetically focuses on experiences that led to changed perceptions and lives. She moves the Dunnes from emotions of confusion and despair to glimmers of hope. Babb's masterpiece is a wonderful and equal companion and deserves to be placed alongside The Grapes of Wrath. (lj) ( )

I literally stumbled across this novel whle browsing in the "new" fiction section of the library. Once I found out that it wasn't new but had lived underground since the 1930s I became intrigued. This novel was accepted and then rejected by Random House because the publisher felt it couldn't compete with the Grapes of Wrath. The books cover similar ground (Panhandle family driving to California in search of work) but Babb's novel offers a completely different version of gender relations and okie/migrant worker representation. I wound up writing my final project for my M.A. on it. ( )

3.5 stars review to follow ( )