The same thing had happened all across America, Verna knew. The market had risen so fast and so far in the late 1920s that a great many ordinary people—housewives, truck drivers, retail clerks, teachers—had been infected by stock market fever. The newspapers and magazines and radio programs spilled over with tempting stories about taxi drivers making a fortune, or a school teacher from Peoria or a janitor from Poughkeepsie striking it rich. Even in Darling, far away from Wall Street, the stock market was all people talked about, from the farmers gathered around the stove in the back room at Snow’s Farm Supply to the women buying dress goods at Mann’s Mercantile. Everybody believed that the market was like an elevator in one of those New York skyscrapers. It was only going to go higher, all the way up to the very top, wherever that was. Everybody wanted to get in on the ground floor.

And you didn’t need a lot of money to get on board. Fork over ten or twenty percent of whatever you wanted to buy, and any broker would happily loan you the rest. Of course, if there was a brief downturn, you might get a “margin call” and have to pony up some more money. But the next day, the stock would bounce up again and you’d be in the clear and on your way to a fortune, so nobody worried about the temporary dips. Up and up and up—until the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached the dizzying peak of 381. People in the know—bankers, brokers, big investors, even President Hoover himself—were saying that the Dow could go as high as 400 or 450, when it would likely reach a plateau before it took off again. Some of them were still saying this on the day the bottom dropped out and panic-stricken people began selling. Last week, Verna had read, the Dow had slipped to 180 and was still on its way down, no telling how far.

“Every last penny is gone,” Liz replied wretchedly. “Mama has no income, and no way to repay the loan, and Mr. Johnson is foreclosing. He told her that she has to be out by October fifteenth.”

“October fifteenth!” Verna exclaimed. “But he has to give her more time than that!”

“She’s had time, Verna. She got the notice in April. You know my mother—she deliberately waited to spring this on me until the very last minute, when there was nothing more that could be done.”