New York Times Bestselling Author
PRE-ORDER FROM:
The Hired Man
BY SANDRA DALLAS
Coming on March 30, 2026
Here’s how St. Martin’s describes the book:
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The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect.
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1937. It’s been seven years since the dust storms started in southeastern Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. Even so, evidence of the Dust Bowl’s grim impact on families— especially on the women, who bear the brunt of their husbands’ frustration and their children’s hunger—is everywhere.
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When Martha Helen’s compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, Martha Helen quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Suspicion, jealousy, and prejudice grip their neighbors—and emotions reach a frenzy after Martha Helen’s best friend, Frankie, disappears and is then found murdered.
Ultimately, Martha Helen is forced to make sense of her conflicting feelings and loyalties in order to help find retribution and reconcile the difference between the law and justice.
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Full of vivid period detail and Sandra Dallas’s trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.
~ St. Martins
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Publishes March 30, 2026
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Stay tuned for book signing dates, there is one on Saturday, April 25, at Books & Brunch, a PEO benefit in Lakewood, Colo. I’ll post the schedule in my next newsletter and on my website.
Author’s Note:
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I don’t remember where the idea for The Hired Man came from. I know that for a long time, I’d wanted to set a story in the Dust Bowl. I’ve written about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression before. My folks lived through that period. After Dad lost his job, he and Mom moved to his parents’ farm in Kansas, in 1933. One day, a neighbor offered him a dollar for a day’s work in the field. Dad worked so hard that he finished up by noon and was paid just fifty cents. That was the only income he had all that summer. I wrote about that in The Persian Pickle Club, however. I had to come up with another story. Besides, but I wanted the terrible storms and economic depression that devastated southeastern Colorado in the 1930s to be a real character in thebook, not just background. So, with only a vague idea of a plot, I started writing, and The Hired Man emerged. The ending turned out to be completely different from the one I’d started out with.
