In the early 1930s, during the worst drought and financial depression in American history, Sam Babb began to dream. Like so many others, this charismatic Midwestern basketball coach wanted a reason to have hope. Traveling from farm to farm near the tiny Oklahoma college where he coached, Babb recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a chance at a better life: a free college education in exchange for playing on his basketball team, the Cardinals.
Despite their fears of leaving home and the sacrifices that their families would face, the women joined the team. And as Babb coached the Cardinals, something extraordinary happened. These remarkable athletes found a passion for the game and a heartfelt loyalty to one another and their coach–and they began to win.
Combining exhilarating sports writing and exceptional storytelling, Dust Bowl Girls takes readers on the Cardinals’ intense, improbable journey all the way to an epic showdown with the prevailing national champions, helmed by the legendary Babe Didrikson. Lydia Reeder captures a moment in history when female athletes faced intense scrutiny from influential figures in politics, education, and medicine who denounced women’s sports as unhealthy and unladylike. At a time when a struggling nation was hungry for inspiration, this unlikely group of trailblazers achieved much more than a championship season.
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PRAISE FOR DUST BOWL GIRLS
“Thrilling.
I loved every minute I spent with the bold, daring women of the Cardinals basketball team, whose remarkable journey to victory is the stuff of American legend.”
— Karen Abbott,
New York Times bestselling author of
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
“A hidden gem of a story.
Reeder’s meticulous research and play-by-play game accounts are a fitting tribute to Coach Babb and the trailblazing athletes he inspired.”
— Library Journal, starred review
“Fascinating.”
— Garden & Gun
“Compelling.”
— New York Journal of Books
“A fun, heartwarming story
of a little-known but important moment in the history of basketball and women’s sports in general.”
— Erica Westly, author of Fastpitch
“This epic sports story
is the stuff of which legends are made.”
— W. Lynne Draper, former president and CEO of the Jim Thorpe Association and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame
“For so long, women have been told they couldn’t
or shouldn’t. In Dust Bowl Girls, Lydia Reeder tells of pioneers in women’s sport who refused to listen. It’s an inspiring story.”
“ A heartwarmingly inspirational tale.
As she tells the amazing story of Babb and his underdog women’s basketball team, Reeder also reveals the challenges facing serious female athletes during the 1920s and ’30s, including the perceived risk of “destroying their feminine image by invading a man’s world.” Sports fans and general readers alike are sure to find the story both worthwhile and entertaining.
— Kirkus Reviews
“…our office copy has been passed from friend to friend
almost as quickly as a basketball moves around the court. Babb was Reeder’s great-uncle, and she had access to many firsthand accounts; as a result, she tells this story with a Boys in the Boat-like range that stretches from the changes in women’s athletics to the hardships of the ’30s to the triumph of the human spirit.”
