RIDING LIKE THE WIND

Honoring a forgotten writer.

Biographer and poet Dunkle sensitively recounts the life of Sanora Babb (1907-2005), a noted journalist, novelist, and memoirist. At the age of 5, she was nicknamed “Riding Like the Wind” because she managed to stay on a runaway pony by holding desperately to its mane. As the biography’s title, the epithet aptly describes Babb’s uncommon grit and determination. When she was 7, her family moved from Oklahoma to a desolate region of Eastern Colorado, where the failure of her father’s dry-land farming scheme forced the family to live in a crude dugout, nearly starving. Many moves followed, which resulted in Babb’s finally going to school, working as a newspaper journalist, and publishing poems and short stories. In 1929, she set out for Los Angeles, eager to escape her father’s volatile temper and cruelty. Dunkle chronicles Babb’s professional successes and growing fame; among her friends and supporters were Ray Bradbury and poet Genevieve Taggard. An attractive, lively young woman, she refused many marriage proposals, including William Saroyan’s. Her longest, most intense relationship was with Academy Award–winning, Chinese-born cinematographer James Wong Howe, whom she was able to marry in 1949—when miscegenation laws ended. In the 1930s, Babb volunteered with the Farm Services Administration, taking detailed notes on the plight of migrant workers during the Dust Bowl. Unfortunately, she was asked to share her notes with John Steinbeck, who mined them for The Grapes of Wrath. Although her own novel based on her experiences was already under contract, when Steinbeck’s book appeared in 1939, her contract was canceled. Despite that grave disappointment, Babb continued to write, earning acclaim for her memoir An Owl on Every Post; her contribution to Dust Bowl history was recognized in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary.

A well-researched, empathetic biography.