St. Martin's Press
April 2026
On Sale: March 31, 2026
304 pages ISBN: 1250352398 EAN: 9781250352392 Kindle: B0F5PBHWXF Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook Add to Wish List
The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect
1937. It’s been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. Even so, evidence of the Dust Bowl’s grim impact on families, especially on the women who bear the brunt of their husbands’ frustration and their children’s hunger, is everywhere.
When Martha Helen’s compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, she quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Suspicion, jealousy, and prejudice grip their neighbors – and emotions reach a frenzy after Martha Helen’s best friend, Frankie, disappears and is then found murdered. Ultimately, Martha Helen is forced to make sense of her conflicting feelings and loyalties in order to help find retribution and to reconcile the difference between the law and justice.
Full of period detail and Sandra Dallas’s trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.
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