Rusty the Pet Squirrel is on the Cover of Leora’s Dexter Stories. What else?

Nelly Murariu @PixBeeDesign designed the cover of Leora’s Dexter Stories, as well as the other Leora books. She also designed the interior and formatted the ebook.

Nelly designed the cover around a photo Leora Wilson took in 1934 to send to her older sons Delbert and Donald Wilson, who had been in the Navy since February of that year. You might remember a photo of them standing next to a Model T Ford truck. Their father Clabe took off the top of the truck that summer.

Clabe is in the driver’s seat in this one, with sons Dale and Danny standing alongside holding their shotguns. Junior is lounging on the hood, focusing on their pet squirrel Rusty.

A closer look at Junior’s shoes reminded me that Clabe owned a set of tools to repair shoes. He bought “whang leather” to make shoestrings for the family.

The stories of the boys joining the Navy, the truck becoming a roadster, and Rusty the pet squirrel are all in the book about the Wilson family as they survived the Great Depression, living “on the dole” and WPA jobs. Clabe sold the roadster that fall. They didn’t have another automobile until 1939!

John Busbee not only edited Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression, he also wrote the engaging foreword for it.

Robin Grunder shepherded this book (as well as three other “Leora books”) through KDP publication with her own company, Legacy Press Books.

I’m so thankful that Grandma Leora took this winsome photo, and that Nelly created such a delightful cover from it. I wonder what Grandma would say about the old photo she took that day becoming part of the cover of a book about her very own family.