What is the setting of Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse?

Joyce City, Oklahoma is not a city at all—although there are a few stores, a school, a community center, and a hotel—but a farming community in one of the most desolate parts of the U.S. in 1934-1935. Dust storms have ravaged the land for four years, and in this, the fifth year of drought, almost nothing has survived.

The action shifts between Billie Jo's house—a shack typical of destitute farmers—her school, the community center where she plays the piano, and various outdoor settings. When she decides to leave home, she hops a box car. But the physical setting is not nearly so important as Billie Jo's conscious interior. Her mind is a room which the characters and events seem to inhabit. Rather than moving into physical space, Billie Jo draws physical space into her interior so that it seems that almost every scene transpires within her mind.