Harp Oletsky, a dryland farmer, reflects on the founding of Uz, Nebraska, named by Polish settlers (the Fourteen Founding Families, or Kinkaiders) after the Land of Uz from the Book of Job. His parents and the other founders saw their immigrant struggle mirrored in Job's trials and clung to the promise that endurance would bring restored prosperity. Harp recalls a recent exchange in which his niece mocked the biblical name and the verses about Job's reward, prompting Harp to insist they are living through their own chapter of suffering.

Harp recounts how the Dust Bowl and four years of drought have devastated Uz, with a third of the population gone. He describes being lured into debt by a Deere salesman who sold Uz farmers the Spider tractor prototype, promising efficiency. The machinery only deepened his bondage to the bank. Tumbleweeds and shifting dust have erased property boundaries, mixing his land with neighbor Otto's. Harp acknowledges the trap: farmers work endlessly just to service the loans on the equipment that helped cause the disaster.

He revisits Black Sunday, the harrowing drive home through the black blizzard with his niece Dell, and his prayers as visibility vanished. Dell spotted the house and called it 'home,' which moved him. Yet upon entering, his expected relief never came—replaced by unease.

Harp shares rumors of post-Black Sunday miracles across the Plains: a house full of black rabbits, a rhinoceros sighting, a tubercular child healed by a sandhill crane. He then reveals his own quiet miracle: during their dash to the house, his hands found the doorknob unerringly, his lungs cleared, his match struck on the first try, and inside the parlor—against all reason—there was not a single speck of dust anywhere.