A Texas Girl Determined to Salvage the Wreckage - an Editorial Review for "Unspoken"

Book Blurb:

“Reminds me, in tone, of Texas classics like The Time it Never Rained and Giant. I loved it. Alexander is a great new talent in the genre of Texana.” –W.F. Strong, author, Stories From Texas, and radio commentator for NPR Texas

A Farm Devastated. A Dream Destroyed. A Family Scattered. And One Texas Girl Determined to Salvage the Wreckage.

Ruby Lee Becker can't breathe. It's 1935 in the heart of the Dust Bowl, and the Becker family has clung to its Texas Panhandle farm through six years of drought, dying crops, and dust storms. On Black Sunday, the biggest blackest storm of them all threatens ten-year-old Ruby with deadly dust pneumonia and requires a drastic choice —one her mother, Willa Mae, will forever regret.

To survive, Ruby is forced to leave the only place she's ever known. Far from home in Waco, and worried her mother has abandoned her, she's determined to get back.

Even after twelve years, Willa Mae still clings to memories of her daughter. Unable to reunite with Ruby, she's broken by their separation.

Through rollicking adventures and harrowing setbacks, the tenacious Ruby Lee embarks on her perilous quest for home —and faces her one unspoken fear.

Heart-wrenching and inspiring, the tale of Ruby Lee's dogged perseverance and Willa Mae's endless love for her daughter shines a light on women driven apart by disaster who bravely lean on one another, find comfort in remade families, and redefine what home means.

Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/DY1uRN

Author Bio:

Jann Alexander writes characters who face down their fears. Her novels are as close-to-true as fiction can get.

Jann is the author of the historical novel, UNSPOKEN, set in the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression eras, and her first book in The Dust Series.

Jann writes on all things creative in her blog, Pairings. She's a 20-year resident of central Texas and creator of the Vanishing Austin photography series. As a former art director for ad agencies and magazines in the D.C. area, and a painter, photographer, and art gallery owner, creativity is her practice and passion.

Jann's  lifelong storytelling habit and her more recent zeal for Texas history merged to become the historical Dust Series. When she is not reading, writing, or creating, she bikes, hikes, skis, and kayaks. She lives in central Texas with her own personal Texan (and biggest fan), Karl, and their Texas mutt, Ruby.

Jann always brakes for historical markers.

Editorial Review:

"Unspoken" by Jann Alexander is a meticulously researched, gripping, and emotionally searing historical novel that revolves around one young girl’s fight for survival and voice in the wake of grief, devastation, and silence during the Dust Bowl era. Here, Alexander covers themes of maternal love, psychological trauma, poverty, and the quiet resilience of women under the weight of unspeakable loss.

Told in dual perspectives—ten-year-old Ruby Lee and her mother Willa Mae—"Unspoken" charts a deeply personal odyssey through the ravaged Texas Panhandle of the 1930s. After losing both her grandmother and infant sister to “dust pneumonia” during a cataclysmic black blizzard, Ruby’s life takes a wrenching turn: her mother, unable to cope, is institutionalized, and Ruby is put on a train east, exiled from everything familiar. Left to adapt in a world of abundance and manners far removed from her dirt-poor origins, Ruby elects to go silent, holding her grief like a talisman. Meanwhile, Willa Mae battles not just literal confinement but the internal unraveling caused by heartbreak and betrayal.

The story opens with a visceral gut punch, a funeral scene charged with fear, dust, and despair:

“They were laid out in simple caskets built only yesterday after my grandma, and then my baby sister, died with the brown dirt—dust pneumonia they called it—clogging their lungs... I picked her up from the little cradle Pa had carved... I ran my hand over her silky hair, shush, shush, take a breath now... until of a sudden I heard her silence louder than Momma’s wails. I shrieked... That’s when I knew what dying was.”

This devastating moment sets the emotional tone of the novel, anchoring the reader in Ruby’s stark, childlike but wise perspective. The novel then weaves through Ruby's exile and Willa Mae’s descent into institutional darkness. It’s an unflinching look at how trauma is handled, especially women’s trauma, in a time before therapy or language existed for such wounds.

Readers will appreciate the quiet emotional buildup in the prose, which is simple yet powerful, often poetic. The structure toggles between Ruby Lee and Willa Mae’s alternating perspectives, providing both the stark external realities and the internal psychological breakdowns. Alexander handles time masterfully; though much of the novel takes place over a few formative years, it is paced with such detail and intensity that each season feels lived.

The character development is strong and layered. Ruby, though young, is no passive narrator. She is full of agency, even in silence. Willa Mae’s voice, in contrast, is halting, broken, poetic. Her scenes in the asylum are some of the most affecting in the book, exposing the era’s cold, clinical treatment of female grief:

“The orderly, rigid, in white. ‘Ready?’ A command... ‘Do you know why you are here?’ I nod. Driven mad by dust. My memory is clear—the judge’s rich baritone, declaring his ruling. Beck nodding, complicit... A pen scratches on paper... COMMITTED.”

Alexander's themes include silence as both punishment and protection. Ruby's muteness is a pointed protest—against abandonment, against forced displacement. And yet, she speaks so loudly through her observations. Her refusal to speak is rendered with nuance and not played for drama. Another stunning example of this subtlety comes in Ruby’s birthday scene, surrounded by luxury she resents:

“All I wanted for my birthday was my momma, who didn’t want me. I took in a gulp of air and blew hard, spit flying everywhere, making my wish. I wished Cousin Bess would die so I could go home.”

The prose throughout is lyrical without being overwritten. Alexander’s background in photography and design shows in her use of color and imagery. Dust is not just setting but antagonist, water is rebirth, and color is emotion. Ruby’s awe at color, after escaping her sepia-toned life, is particularly memorable:

“I took in all the colors everywhere, and I hardly had the names for ’em, accustomed as I was to the brown life I’d led back home... How many kinds of blues were there... the aquamarines, the deep purples, violets, crimsons...?”

Stylistically, Alexander opts for short chapters, tight internal monologues, and childlike cadences that deepen in maturity as Ruby ages. She stays with you not as a victim, but as a girl who refused to let the wind steal her voice forever. Readers will come for the Dust Bowl drama, but stay for the interior world Alexander creates—harsh, heartbreaking, and profoundly human.

In "Unspoken" by Jann Alexander, the Dust Bowl is not just a setting—it’s a slow, grinding silence that tries to smother the women at the story’s heart. But in Ruby and Willa Mae, Alexander has given us two unforgettable voices—one loud in its silence, the other broken but echoing. It is without a doubt a beautiful, painful, and necessary read.

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