Hard Times is the story of a family’s survival during one of the darkest eras of the 20th century, The Great Depression.

In the 1920s, there was no Social Security, no aid to dependent children, and no welfare. A widow with children was either dependent on her family or friends for support. In some instances, this wasn’t a great handicap, but for the laboring class, it was especially burdensome.

This was the world, as Eva Hester Reynolds knew it, when she was left alone by the death of her husband. There was little she could do to earn a living. Women were commonly discriminated against in business matters and other areas of everyday life. An unmarried woman, widowed or single, was considered a threat to those women who still had the security of a husband, and they were determined that those “available” women be married.

Eva, thinking that this might be the better way, decides to remarry, but it may have been a mistake. Where she had found peace and contentment with her first husband, there was now a battle of the wills. To further complicate matters, the nation was caught in the worst economic crunch in its history.

Paperback; 218 pages