Book recounts adventurous life of a Mississippi River towboat cook

The following is the text of a press release issued by Xulon Press:
 
(LONGWOOD, Fla.) — Compelling riverboat stories combine with the powerful example of one woman’s life as author Dotsey Wiseman Welliver relates her riverboat mother’s generous culinary gifts and wide open heart in her new Xulon Press title, Every Meal a Holiday: Cooking on the Mississippi ($11.99, paperback, 978-1-60957-544-1).
 
With humorous strokes, the author highlights the courage of a cotton sharecropper’s wife who decides to exchange her back shattering, low reward picksack for a steady paycheck, cooking nonstop for thirty days at a time for a ten-man crew on a working towboat. Woven into the cook’s adventures are fascinating facts about the Mississippi River, the tugboat crews, and the worthy service they render us all.
“I hope to relate compelling riverboat stories combined with the powerful example of one quite ordinary but courageous woman,†the author says. “My tendency to use humor will make my writing more enjoyable for many.â€
Now retired, Dotsey Welliver worked nearly 20 years in editorial capacities for the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. Dotsey grew up a cotton sharecropper’s daughter in the southeastern Missouri Bootheel along rural routes near teeny towns where Third Street would be outside the city limits. This book is based on her experiences of living near the banks of the Mississippi during her formative years, hearing stories from riverboat crew members and her riverboat cook mother for more than two decades, and becoming acquainted with riverboat life through various friendships with riverboat employees.
Xulon Press, a division of Salem Communications, is the world’s largest Christian publisher, with more than 8,000 titles published to date. Retailers may order Every Meal a Holiday through Ingram Book Company and/or Spring Arbor Book Distributors. Every Meal a Holiday is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com.
By Professional Mariner Staff