Jessie Taylor confronted the harsh realities of growing up as a sharecropper's daughter by pretending each trial was a fancy pearl. During her childhood, the only pearl Jessie ever held was the neck of her jersey cow named Pearl who lived down by the bayou. Across the river sat that enormous Parish school, a place not meant for poor country girls. Still, a girl named Jessie, could dream. Dream she did. Door after door opened to this girl who sweated...