Trials of the Earth

A pioneer woman's memoir of the Mississippi Delta that “crackles with personality, putting a face on the unsung, nameless tillers of the soil” ( Publishers Weekly ). Near the end of her life, Mary Mann Hamilton (1866–c.1936) began recording her experiences in the backwoods of the Mississippi Delta. The result is this astonishing first-person account of a pioneer woman who braved grueling work, profound tragedy, and a pitiless wilderness (she and her family faced floods, tornadoes, fires, bears,