I Still Dream about Columbus

I just read this book for the second time. If you want to really feel how it was to struggle for middle-class survival during the Great Depression, this is the book to read.

I picked up this novel at the library because it was set in Columbus, Ohio, where I live. It begins a couple of years before the Depression. The Rileys (Pop, Mama, sons Gail, Ken, and Frank, and daughter Mary) have just bought a new home and are set to live happily ever after. Pop has a heart attack and loses his job. He and Ken repair radiators out of their basement. The Depression sets in. Gail goes to Oklahoma to work in the oil fields. Frank mows lawns. Mama takes in washing. Gramaw moves in and does sewing. They manage to continue meeting the mortgage payments of $33 a month. On a trip home from the grocery, Ken and Frank are held up by a black man with a gun. (His family is hungry.) The boys give him half their groceries. The Klan finds out about it, beats up the black man, and drags him over to the Rileys for identification. Ken lies and tells the Klansmen they have the wrong man. The Rileys are Catholic, and the Klan hates Catholics almost as much as blacks. When the mortgage company goes belly up, the new mortgage holder (a Klansman) demands full payment ($2000) of the Rileys' home loan, and the family is forced to give up their home and move to a rental in a poorer section of the neighborhood. Throughout these troubles and others, the family support each other. This novel contains no abuse, no alcoholism, no sex, no four-letter words. It is entertaining, well written, and satisfying.I see Bickham has also written some fifty other books: mysteries, westerns, books on writing, but few people seem to have read him. It is their loss.