Ardis Heights

This is the story of a large family who was forced to leave behind the lives they knew when they lost everything during the Great Depression and had to go live together on their parents farm in a small community in northeast Texas. It tells not only of their difficulties in living together but also those of their aging parents who are forced to deal with the troubled marriages, jealousies, an affair, alcoholism and general unhappiness of their grown children. It's a story of loss, fear and betrayal and finally acceptance, hope and forgiveness.
It touches on the political scene taking place at that time, the change in methods of dealing with the Depression from President Hubert Hoover to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the crisis going on in the country when banks failed and businesses closed leaving thousands wandering homeless and hungry trying to survive.
This book also paints a picture of how life was lived in those days when most houses had only one bathroom, if that, many had outhouses. Family's had one phone and it was on a party line, and they felt lucky to have one car. Chickens had to be caught, killed and plucked before being cut up and cooked, and clothes were washed on a rub board or a labor intensive washing machine and hung on a line to dry, just to mention a few things that people in the world of today couldn't imagion.