"I would try to get them to sing or talk, do anything to raise their spirits, but they remained sullenly silent. At that hour they hated me and I hated myself, knowing how I appeared to them--a pinch-faced crone, straggle-haired, bony, ragged, too desperate for anyone with only fourteen years on them but still driven by a desperation that was unholy and ugly."

Cautious and cordial would not be good terms to use to describe the speaker of these words. Neither would these adjectives be good for describing any of the typical heroines the reader meets in a novel written by Vera Cleaver and her husband Bill. This excerpt from the Cleavers' Where the Lilies Bloom, spoken by Mary Call Luther, the young protagonist of that book, provides a quick glimpse at her defiant spirit. The persistent attitude displayed by Mary Call is featured in every one of...