Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik

This is a story set in the 1930's, during the depression.  The main character is Violet Mathers, a motherless teenager living with her drunken dad in Kentucky.  Violet is less than pretty, as skinny as a beanpole and mistreated by her father.  She is made fun of by all the kids in town.  When her fathers tells her to get a job, she goes to the thread factory for work. She is very good at her job, but one day the thread machine gets tangled and she forgets to turn it off before fixing the problem and ends up getting her hand amputated.  This makes Violet even more lonely so she decides to take all the money she has saved, gets on a bus and goes west toward California, where she intends to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. 

While on the bus, a terrrible storm blows up and the bus ends up stranded in North Dakota, where a family takes her and another passenger, a black man into their home.  This sets all kind of things happening.  Violet falls in love with the farmer's son, Kjel, and the son and the black man, Austin, set out to form a band.  Violet, Kjel and Austin meet up with Austin's brother, Dallas, and form the Pearltones.  Violet becomes their business manager; the band becomes a big hit.  They travel from town to town.  One night, Dallas brings some vagarants to the campsite and Kjel is shot and ends up paralyzed.  Needless to say, the band splits up and Dallas goes his own way.  The rest of the group returns to Kjel's home where all kinds of catastrophic things happen.

Read the book to find out how things come out.  The last part of the book is somewhat shocking.