Where Only Storms Grow by Alyssa Colman

Where Only Storms Grow brings the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s vividly to life, as a family struggles to hold on to hope.

Where Only Storms Grow by Alyssa Colman. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2025. 237 pages.

• Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12
• Recommended For: ages 8-15

“Everything started going wrong the afternoon that the bird hit the kitchen window.” Joanna’s mother is for letting the cats have the stunned and immobile creature, since food is scarce for everybody. Her twin brother Howard (Howe) shrugs off her concern and her big brother Lou is too busy, as always. Her sympathetic father helps Joanna find a box to keep the bluebird safe and watches with her to make sure its leg isn’t broken. Within a few days the bluebird flies to the barn rafters and finds a perch while chirping its happy song.

“Hope is a thing with feathers,” as the Emily Dickinson poem goes. Joanna has needed hope as the curvature of her spine grows more pronounced – scoliosis, the doctor calls it. But lately, her whole family desperately needs hope in the relentless dust storms that pound the Oklahoma panhandle. Then the bank forecloses on Uncle Hank’s neighboring farm, and Daddy decides he must go to California with his brother’s family to find work to pay his own mortgage. That leaves Lou, Howe, and Mama to run the place, since Mama won’t allow Joanna to do any heavy work. Howe resents being taken away from school and his ambitions to write. Lou resents the responsibility weighing heavily on him. Joanna resents her mother’s coddling because it tells her she isn’t good for much. 

Everyone resents the dirt piling up in snowlike drifts after every storm, sifting down from the ceiling, settling on furniture and linens, corroding the lungs of humans and livestock. Resentment contributes to the accident that takes Lou out of commission and makes losing the farm seem more likely than ever. What now?

Where Only Storms Grow makes the reader almost feel the grittiness of a daily war against dirt. Chapters alternate Joanna’s voice with Howe’s as the two gradually learn to rely on each other and the family. The situation will get very grim before it gets better, but it does get better as each twin finds a sense of self-worth and belonging in the cauldron of adversity. Though the family goes to church, there is little mention of prayer or relying on God. Also, the vocabulary and occasional anachronism of the first-person voices make Joanna and Howe sound more contemporary than the average rural Okie. But their story will make readers care about them and feel a sense of satisfaction by the end.

Bottom Line: An absorbing tale of hardship and triumph.

Related Reading From Redeemed Reader

• Reviews:  For striking photographs of the Dust Bowl see our review of Picturing a Nation. For an overall view of the Great Depression and the political response to it, teens should read the graphic novel version of The Forgotten Man (starred review).
• Reviews: Young siblings orphaned by the dust storms search for Someplace to Call Home. And a contemporary dust storm threatens a young asthmatic sufferer in Dust.
• A Resource:  See our Learning to Lead booklist for other stories of young people overcoming adversity.

You may purchase Where Only Storms Grow on Amazon