The Least One

By Borden Deal

Book Overview

The Least One , published originally in 1967, portrays a white sharecropping family during the Great Depression and is based on Borden Deal's experiences growing up on a small farm in northeastern Mississippi. "My own memory produced a flood of material," said the author. "I remembered the loss of the farm, the day the sheriff had come to dispossess us; I remembered picking blackberries and selling them in town for a dime a bucket; I remembered the hope and promise of a government mule." The story is told through the voice of a twelve-year-old, significantly called Boy Sword, and is set in a fictitious community that suggests the area of Cullman, Alabama. Deal portrays the realities of cotton-field work: planting, chopping, the laying-by time, and harvesting. He succeeds in evoking not only the crushing economic circumstances of poor Southern whites in that period but also their fierce sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0817306730
• ISBN13: 9780817306731
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 3 years and up
• Grade Range: Preschool and higher