Watch on Soap2day. Colby, Kansas, 1933, America is beginning to recover from the Great Depression but while recovery is beginning, the Great Plains, from the panhandle of Texas to western Nebraska is battling an even greater foe and much less forgiving one; nature. Rising out of the dust came two men, Ray Garvey and John Kriss, who saw that the ground in western Kansas and eastern Colorado was fertile and capable of raising wheat and did so conquering the odds, all at a time when the world needed more than just food, it needed hope.