The Great War was over. Land left as swamps by the New Madrid Earthquake had been drained. Men, some of them veterans of World War I, searching for work came into this newly-opened territory in order to cut timber, clear new ground and create productive farms out of this once-sunken soil. Most, like D.O. Faries, who migrated from Illinois, leased acreage or sharecropped -- planting, chopping, and picking cotton for a percentage of the profit due absent landlords. In this frontier society, food was often scarce and floods were frequent, but there was also time, in the midst of tragedy, for...