MSI Press Blog

  Sharon Cole's book, Hazel and Olaf reached #4 among hot new releases in the category of Great Depression and #24 in depression history (Amazon general category). Book Description: They sold the farm, packed up seven children, and chased a promise called California. Based on Hazel’s journal, this true story follows a family that leaves Wisconsin hoping for relief from brutal winters—only to run out of money with hundreds of miles still to go. Stranded and desperate, they enter a world of labor camps, endless fieldwork, hunger, and exhaustion, where families are worked hard, paid little, and treated as disposable. Once respected and secure, they find themselves suddenly labeled vagrants. Pride becomes a liability. Dignity must be defended daily. And survival depends on grit, faith, and refusing to give up—especially for Hazel, who will not allow poverty to erase who she is or break her family apart. This is a raw, gripping true story of endurance, injustice, and a woman who stood ...

  Field work in the Depression was not just a job; it was survival. Families followed the harvests like tides — cotton in Texas, beans in California, fruit in the San Joaquin Valley. They lived by the rhythm of crops and weather, moving from one promise of wages to the next. The work was hard, the pay meager, and the dignity fragile. The Family as Workforce Children worked beside their parents, not out of choice but necessity. A ten‑year‑old could pick cotton, sort beans, or carry water. A mother might cook for twenty workers in a camp kitchen, then join the line in the fields. Fathers negotiated with foremen for pennies per pound. Everyone labored; everyone contributed. Childhood was brief, replaced by endurance. The Camps and the Dust Families lived in makeshift camps — tents, shacks, or cars turned into homes. Dust settled on everything: food, bedding, skin. Privacy was a luxury, and sanitation often nonexistent. Yet within that hardship, families built small worlds of care — sh...