A Rock Candy Dream

About the Book

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.

About the Author

When this picture was taken in 1932 Annabel Jones (later to be Johnson) was about to begin a writing career that would extend over six decades. At the age of twelve she submitted her first short story to a pulp western magazine, and received the first of countless rejection letters which eventually filled a drawer in her home in St. Louis, Missouri.

After a short stay in college, she began to do research on an historical novel, which she took with her in 1947 when she moved to New York and took a job in a publishing house. That one didn’t sell, either.

It was only after her marriage to Edgar Johnson, an artist with a career of his own, that she began to acquire the work ethic, the attention to detail, and the ardent perfectionism that he brought to their partnership. Within a few years their books for young readers were well known in the field and received numerous awards.

Since his death she has continued to write, her list of titles numbering now over thirty. Story-telling is a love that began in those long ago days in Missouri when her cowboys rode the pages into a fictitious adventure. She says that it is the thing which gets her up every morning.