FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – In telling the story of her family farm in Desha County in the Arkansas Delta, Margaret Jones Bolsterli brings together her own research, historical perspective and family lore as it reaches her from the days of her great-grandfather down to her nephew.

Her new memoir, During Wind and Rain (paperback, $17.95), moves from the land’s acquisition in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the 1927 Flood, the Great Depression, and the drought of 1930 to the modern considerations of mechanization, fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation and describes the transformation of dense swamp and forest to today’s commercial agriculture.

During Wind and Rain was described by Grey Osterud of the Rural Women’s Studies Association this way: “If this richly endowed and sadly altered land could tell its own story, Bolsterli’s family saga comes as close to it as I can imagine.”

Mary Gay Shipley, owner of That Bookstore in Blytheville, said, “I wondered as I read During Wind and Rain what families in the Delta would recognize their family in the Jones story. Many, I suspect. … I loved the way the family history is woven into the story of the land.”

Bolsterli, who retired in 1993 from a 25-year career as a University of Arkansas English professor, will be reading, signing and discussing During Wind and Rain at 6 p.m Thursday, May 1, at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville, 557 S. School. The public is invited to attend and hear this author discuss her farm story while shopping for local wares at the Mill District Fayetteville Farmers Market, which will be going on next door. Bolsterli will also be reading and signing her book at the Community Room at Phillips Community College, DeWitt campus, just a few miles from the Jones Family Farm, on May 22.

Bolsterli is also the author of Born in the Delta and the editor of Vinegar Pie and Chicken Bread and A Remembrance of Eden.