Who is Missouri/Zoo Fever from Other Voices, Other Rooms and what is their importance?

Missouri Fever is Jesus Fever's granddaughter and also a resident at Skully's Landing. Joel first meets Missouri when she cooks breakfast for Joel on his first day at the Landing. Joel is struck by Missouri's generous and worldly manner and thinks that he may have found a surrogate mother figure. Missouri senses Joel's vulnerabilities and comforts Joel as he struggles to find his place in his new, eccentric family. Missouri lives in constant fear of the return of her violent husband, Keg Brown, who is away working on a chain gang as punishment for slashing Missouri's throat in a fit of rage. Missouri had married Keg when she was only fourteen years old and suffered the attack soon after the wedding. Missouri now cares for her ailing grandfather and conducts religious services for the two of them at the Landing. After Jesus Fever's death, Missouri leaves on foot for a better life in Washington DC, but returns soon after, the victim of a gang rape by four white men she encounters during her travels. At the end of the story, Missouri is just a shell of a woman, with all her high spirits smothered by grief and despair.