Meryl Jean Another Whirlwind

It had been three years since Meryl came to live with Grandma in the Bootheel of Missouri in Muddy Ox, a tiny community where everybody knew everybody and everybody's dog.

At age sixteen, she'd evolved from a pampered child who hadn't been made to pick her socks off the floor to one who could skillfully hoe a field row and pick two hundred and fifty pounds of cotton in a twelve-hour day.

Her motivation came when Grandma told her she could keep all the money she made to buy her books and scho...