Dexter, Missouri - Keller Public Library will host local author John C. fisher on Thursday, March 14th, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. in the community room at the library.

Fisher will be available to sign his book Southeast Missouri - From Swampland to Farmland: The Transformation of the Lowlands.

"As the 20th century began, swamps with immense timber resources covered much of the Missouri Bootheel. After investors harvested the timber, the landscape became overgrown. The conversion of swampland to farmland began with small drainage projects but complete reclamation was made possible by a system of ditches dug by the Little River Drainage District—the largest in the U.S., excavating more earth than for the Panama Canal."

"Farming quickly took over. The devastation of Southern cotton fields by boll weevils in the early 1920s brought to the cooler Bootheel an influx of black and white sharecroppers and cotton became the principal crop. Conflict over New Deal subsidies to increase cotton prices by reducing production led to the 1939 Sharecropper Demonstration, foreshadowing civil rights protests three decades later."

"A must read for any person interested in the history of the Bootheel," a quote by the Missouri Historical Review.

This event is sponsored by Friends of the Library.