Product Description

Livin' in High Cotton takes place in western Georgia and eastern Alabama during the Great Depression. Times are hard, and the cotton industry is failing. Families need to bind together to survive.

Cultured, attractive, and strong-willed, Shelby Collins is mature for a fifteen-year-old. She and her family live in Cartersville, Georgia. Her mother has taken a trip to Alabama to tend ShelbyÂ’s ailing grandmother. Shelby has been left at home to care for her younger brother and sister and to see to the needs of her father. One night her father, who has come home drunk, tries to molest her. Frightened, she flees, but it isnÂ’t long before her angry father tracks her down. Forcing her to write a note saying that she has run away from home, he takes her away and places her in a reform school in distant Birmingham.

While Shelby is able to make a new life for herself in Birmingham, she suffers greatly. Her happy home life is over, and it appears she will never see it again. Emotionally scarred by her abuse, she nevertheless learns that blessings can come in unexpected ways.

This poignant and heart-warming novel addresses several fundamental human longings. Is there an overshadowing influence for good that can help direct our lives? Can we learn to trust again after weÂ’ve been betrayed? With evil people in the world, does it pay to be kind-hearted? Is there a power that can come into our hearts to help us forgive?

Popular Southern author Deborah Smith calls LivinÂ’ in High Cotton, "A compelling story of family loyalty, love, loss, and strength, as warm and fertile as the rich red clay of a Georgia field. The inspiring, hardscrabble lives of Depression-era southerners make for a vivid story of love and forgiveness."

The novel is the first work of mother and daughter team Sandra Poole and Jennifer Leigh Youngblood. They have crafted the setting in and around the towns where they grew up, and the story is inspired by the real-life experiences of SandraÂ’s grandmother.

Besides being intimately familiar with the region and the people, Sandra and Jennifer have carefully researched the time period to make the setting historically accurate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1622523 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Sandra Poole grew up in Alder Springs, Alabama, the setting for this novel. Her daughter and co-author, Jennifer Leigh Youngblood, was also born in Alabama. "Livin' in High Cotton" is a story that was inspired by the life of Sandra's grandmother.

Sandra now lives in Alabama with her husband. Jennifer and her husband live in the mountains of Tennessee.

Customer Reviews

Real
This book is about the real south and about what happened to real people back in a time that was not only hard for people to survive but hard for the land to produce sizeable crops. Livin in High Cottons' Shelby is an example of how many women worked and lived in a time almost forgotten. I thank the authors for reminding me what a lot of women went through in the earlier years ao that we could have what we have today.

Enjoyable!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Livin' in High Cotton". It includes all the elements for great fiction - romance, suspense and action. I highly recommend it!

Inspired by the experiences of Sandra's grandmother
Livin' In High Cotton is the collaboration of Sandra Poole and her daughter Jennifer Leigh Youngblood. The story is set in the Depression-era south and inspired by the real-life experiences of Sandra's grandmother. Times were hard in western Georgia and eastern Alabama when the cotton industry was failing and families had to bind tightly together in order to survive those bleak and uncertain years. Shelby Collins was mature for a fifteen-year-old girl. When Shelby's mother had to go off to Alabama to tend Shelby's ailing grandmother, the girl had to care for her younger brother and sister, while seeing to the needs of her father. One night her father came home drunk and tried to attack her. When a frightened Shelby flees the home, her father tracks her down and places her in a reform school in distant Birmingham. Emotionally scarred by her abuse, Shelby is sill able to make a new life for herself and learns that blessings can come in the most unexpected ways. Strongly recommended and superbly crafted reading, Livin' In High Cotton successfully and engagingly tackles such difficult themes as whether or not trust can be regained after betrayal, how can being kind-hearted succeed in a world populate by evil people, and is there a power higher than ourselves that can come into our hearts to foster forgiveness and release us from the emotional bondage of a blighted past?