Trials of the Earth: The True Story of a Pioneer Woman

Mary Mann Hamilton (1866–c.1936) recorded her experiences as a pioneer woman living in the backwoods of the Mississippi Delta in this first-person memoir. Hamilton documents her family's encounters with grueling work, profound tragedy, and a harsh wilderness, including floods, tornadoes, fires, bears, panthers, and snakes, as she worked to protect her home in the early American South. An early draft was submitted to a writers' competition sponsored by Little, Brown in 1933 but did not win. The manuscript remained largely unknown until eighty-three years later, when it was recovered in partnership with Hamilton's descendants. Written in spare, rich prose, the memoir provides a detailed account of one woman's endurance and survival during a formative period in American history.