Ma was a crafty lady who had been taught well by her father and mother, Elias Samuel Totten and Nancy Jane Bradford Totten. She learned to cook, sew, plow, hoe, pick cotton, do housework, and dry apples and peaches for fried pies. She worked like a man. She could plow behind a mule as well as most men. She could also pull her weight in using a crosscut saw for cutting logs and firewood for the fireplace, kitchen cook stove, and the big iron potbelly heating stove that heated our house.

In Carl J. Barger’s latest book, Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, he writes of growing up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Cleburne County, Arkansas. He relates his struggles and triumphs as the ninth child in a family of eleven children born during the Great Depression to Edward and Mamie Ann Totten Barger of Higden, Arkansas. Growing up in the small community of Higden, population 122, he experienced poverty as well as a thirst for knowledge and understanding, always dreaming of a better life. He remembers lying awake at night listening to his mother crying, while she wondered where the family’s next meal was coming from. His Pa would say, “Mamie, I’m going to take care of that. Don’t you worry!” Barger includes the people who made a difference in his life; people who challenged him, motivated him, and influenced the man he became. He gives credit where credit is due. Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way was written to inspire others who are struggling, not knowing what the future holds for them.