Velda Brotherton is an award winning author, and a native of Arkansas and the Boston Mountains. Though she did not grow up there, she spent her youth visiting relatives who remained to experience the harsh and demanding lifestyle. In 1972 she and her husband returned to build a house 15 miles from where she was born.

Velda is an artist who paints in oils, but she began to write about 25 years ago. Eventually she felt called upon to explore her roots and realized that she had to learn and tell the stories of those who had settled in the Boston Mountains. For as long as she can remember her father told stories. It was only natural for her to follow in his footsteps, and so 20 years ago she began to interview and write about the people who have lived in these rugged mountains for generations.

Her first published book, Wandering In The Shadows of Time: An Ozarks Odyssey, tells their stories and hers, and is still available. Her columns in both The Washington County Observer and The White River Valley News, as well as features in Life In The Ozarks and other newspapers in Arkansas, all reveal the lives of these tough Arkansas pioneers.

Her mother began to collect recipes when she first crawled on a box so she could cook on a wood stove at the age of eight, while her mother worked in the fields and garden. Those recipes, as well as many others from friends and relatives whose families have lived in the Boston's for many generations, are shared here. Some you will be able to replicate, a few you will not, but perhaps you'll enjoy learning how the people of this rural area came together to work, play and socialize while they shared the bounty of the land.