Author Description

Jessie Taylor confronted the harsh realities of growing up as a sharecropper's daughter by pretending each trial was a fancy pearl. During her childhood, the only pearl Jessie ever held was the neck of her jersey cow named Pearl who lived down by the bayou. Across the river sat that enormous Parish school, a place not meant for poor country girls. Still, a girl named Jessie, could dream. Dream she did. Door after door opened to this girl who sweated through long days in cotton fields and company folks' houses, doing whatever it took to get ahead. When the Allies proclaimed victory over Hitler, Jessie's world seemed limitless...and her dreams came crashing down. In the creative memoir of northeast Louisiana native and lifelong resident Jessie McCormick, relive the character building years of the Great Depression, World War II and the tumultuous 1960s, as a driven woman learns the meaning of family, loss, perseverance, and a faith that will last forever.