Leaving the Homeplace: Tales Beyond the Levee (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781956027600)

Mary Sue (Shy) Anton was born on a dairy farm near the Mississippi River during the Great Depression. One of her most vivid childhood memories is the 1937 flood, when her family evacuated in the middle of the night and lived in the local courthouse for several weeks. At age twenty-five, after leaving the home place to seek her fortune elsewhere, she met Arthur David Anton, recently discharged from the Air Force. After their marriage, she put her husband through school, working as a secretary with a secret clearance at an Air Force base. With two small children, they settled in southeast Missouri until her husband pursued his dream of becoming a physician. The author returned to work, and Art received his M.D. degree from the University of Missouri, but not before their third child was born. In 1969, the family moved to Texas for Art's medical practice. Mary Sue is a graduate of Loretto Academy, Kansas City, Missouri and received a B.A. in history from the University of Houston-Clear Lake (Texas). She has worked as a computer tutor, genealogy lecturer, soybean farmer, freelance writer, and editor. After publishing a genealogy book with two cousins in 1994, she began writing popular histories. Today she lives in an independent living senior community in League City, Texas, where she used her time during the Coronavirus pandemic to write this, her fourth book. Her siblings contributed their own stories to round out her memories and chronicle of her life. Also by Mary Sue Anton: Pioneers of New Madrid, Missouri and Their Descendants Including Lewis, Morrison, Phillips, Waters and Other Related Families (co-authored with Thomas Edwards Brown and Mary Camille Brown Thornton) New Madrid: A Mississippi River Town In History and Legend Tales From a Century-Old Courthouse: New Madrid County, Missouri