The River God Runs Through Her

A daughter praises the strength of her extraordinary mother who was not supposed to survive an unknown illness at birth; yet, she not only survived, she went on to overcome tremendous, almost insurmountable odds, including, but not limited to a childhood of extreme poverty, abuse, child labor, alcoholic parents, the Great Depression, sharecropping with devious and unscrupulous landowners as well as the racism typical of the Jim Crow South, all to realize her dream of a better life. To escape the abuse of her father, who shot at her when she was fifteen, she dropped out of school and married along the side of the road. After domestic abuse and eleven children, she earned her GED, and obtained a college degree. She would later enter Howard University and be accepted into Spelman College at age seventy-three. In December, 2015, at eighty-four, twenty years after she began penning her autobiography, and surviving a massive stroke and breast cancer, Stokestown: Dreaming behind Closed Doors was released. In this we see the fierce and resilient spirit of a warrior general and a most unlikely champion birthed from the womb of mourning. It is in this vein of unwavering faith, that this memoir is written to my mother, Hattie Vance Wellington and affirms that dreams come true at any age if we just don't quit.