Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person / Central Narrator—Billie Jo
Out of the Dust is a classic first-person story where we get to witness the main character's growth first hand. Hesse offers a rather unique twist on this point of view by writing the book as Billie Jo's diary. Because the story is presented entry by entry, we get to see the story unfold as it actually happens, and experience this time of Billie Jo's life right along with her.
The down side, though, is that we don't always get the entire story. Billie Jo often is dishonest with herself about her feelings, reports only parts of events, and views things strictly from her point of view. (If we're being honest, our diaries do the same exact thing.) Take her feelings about Mad Dog, for example. When she learns at the beginning of the story that he was Arley's first choice to play at the Palace, she writes:
Darn that blue-eyed boy / with his fine face and his / smooth voice / twice as good / as a plowboy has any right to be. (4.7)
On the surface, it seems like she's jealous of him, but we know the score—even before she finally comes out and says it, we know she has a crush on him. Otherwise she wouldn't care about his eyes and face—heck, she might not even call his voice smooth, but instead choose a less sexy word for it like, say, excellent. Though we aren't often one step ahead of Billie Jo, we are in this entry.
The point of view choice also keeps us in the dark about the experiences of many of the book's other characters. This is what makes Ma such a giant enigma. We know she's got mixed feelings about Billie Jo playing piano for money, and Billie Jo muses later:
I don't think she was ever / really meant for farm life, / I think once she had bigger dreams, / but she made herself over / to fit my father. (60.7)
Both these things give us hints about her character, but not her complete background. The person we know best is consistently Billie Jo, which keeps up rooted in her story—and rooting for her—the whole way through.