Seven Songs in Seven Days The Journey of an Arkansas Traveler

Author and songwriter Jane Fallon's father Gerald (Jerry) Dwane Ross, left Arkansas as an 11-year-old in 1936. The Great Depression had taken its toll across the South. At a time when thousands migrated away from the impoverished region, the Ross family also made that westward trek toward potential posterity. On a trip from Oregon to California in 2008, the author listened to her father's stories of a time when work was "just what you did" and life was less1010complicated that it is today. Meanwhile, she challenged herself to write a song each day. But what began as a song-a-day challenge evolved into a journey of self-discovery that is part travelogue, part biography, and part creative treatise. Each day of the journey chronicles the life of her 83-year-old father as he grew from a sharecropper's son to an Oregon cattleman. Along the way, he revisits his experiences as a working man in post World War II California. As she travels and listens to her dad's stories, she ventures into the realm of creativity, exploring where songs come from and how they reflect the world around us. Through music, she takes us all to a home that expands far beyond the limits of a of house or a country and into the sphere of the soul and spirit.