The Great Depression of the 1930s is underway when Herbert Hoover’s dream to build a hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River is finally realized. Out of work men from California, Nevada, and Texas are a major part of the 21,000 workers employed for the dam’s construction. They arrive to find NO town, desert heat, and NO water supply.

The unnamed main character is one of the many employed unskilled workers. His facial expressions amplify and personalize the hardships of: dysentery, muddy drinking water, ditch latrines,  living in a tent city in desert heat and freezing cold, and the dangers from blasting rock.

Amidst the graphics of the construction work there is an easily understandable diagram of how the water gets to the turbines to generate the power.