The first account of the remarkable 18-month journey of Lorena Hickok, intimate friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, throughout the country during the worst of the Great Depression, bearing witness to the unprecedented ravages; an indelible portrait of an unprecedented crisis.

Prologue: Muffled figures, bitter winds --View to a New Deal -- Part of the story -- Coal country -- Strandees -- The ghosts of Wall Street -- America's Siberia -- "The richest village in the world" -- The stricken South -- Empire of misery -- Epilogue: Prospects.