With the unexpected popularity of the novel came floods of mail to Olive Ann Burns requesting a sequel to Cold Sassy Tree. In 1987 she underwent a second round of chemotherapy which led to congestive heart failure and more than a year of complete bed rest.

In February 1988 with the assistance of a Dictaphone and her neighbor/secretary Norma Duncan she began the sequel with the planned title Time, Dirt and Money. Her father, William Arnold Burns, had been her model for Will Tweedy in Cold Sassy Tree, and Time, Dirt, and Money was to be the saga of her parents' life and marriage during the Depression. The book was unfinished at the time of her death, July 4, 1990.

Her dedicated editor at Ticknor & Fields, Katrina Kenison, assembled the early chapters which Olive Burns had completed and supplemented these with Burns's notes. Kenison then wrote a reminiscence of...