Bontemps struggled to make enough from his books to support his family. However, more important, he gained little acknowledgement for his work despite being a prolific writer. This caused him to become discouraged as an African-American writer of this time. He started to believe that it was futile for him to attempt to address his writing to his own generation, so he chose to focus his serious writing on younger and more progressive audiences. Bontemps met Jack Conroy on the Illinois Writers’ Project, and in collaboration they wrote "The Fast Sooner Hound" (1942). This was a children's story about a hound dog, Sooner, who races and outruns trains. Embarrassed about this, the roadmaster puts him against the fastest train, the Cannon Ball.