MSI Press Blog

During the Great Depression, education for children in migrant labor camps was as fragile as the tents they slept in. Families moved constantly, chasing harvests across California’s valleys and plains. Schools were fixed places; these children were not. Yet, somehow, learning still found them. In the early years, most migrant children had no formal schooling at all. They worked beside their parents in the fields, picking cotton, beans, or fruit from dawn until dusk. But as the crisis deepened, reformers and teachers began to see that ignorance was another kind of poverty — one that could last generations. The federal government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) stepped in, building makeshift schools near camps and hiring teachers willing to teach under canvas roofs or in converted barracks. Lessons were often improvised. A single teacher might teach reading, arithmetic, and hygiene to forty children of mixed ages. Supplies were scarce — chalkb...

  Tucker, Georgia is the kind of place that doesn’t try to impress you. It simply is —steady, neighborly, and quietly proud of its own rhythms. Spend an afternoon there and you start to understand why people stay, why they show up for one another, and why the city’s motto, “Where families flourish and businesses prosper,” feels less like branding and more like a lived truth. The Heartbeat of Main Street Main Street Tucker is the city’s front porch. On any given day, you’ll see retirees lingering over coffee at the Corner Cup, teenagers drifting between shops, and families stopping to chat with the kind of ease that suggests they’ve known each other for years. There’s a gentle hum to the place—cars rolling slowly past, the occasional dog tugging its owner toward the smell of fresh biscuits, and the unmistakable sound of someone greeting someone else by name. The charm isn’t curated; it’s inherited. Tucker grew up as a railroad town, and you can still feel that sense of connection a...

  Pre-order sales of Kindle ebook available on Amazon . Release date: June 30. Pre-order sales of paperback book available on Barnes & Noble and Amazon . Release date: June 30. Pre-order sales of paperback book available at 25 percent discount available at MSI Press webstore . Release date June 30. Book Description: They sold the farm, packed up seven children, and chased a promise called California. Based on Hazel’s journal, this true story follows a family that leaves Wisconsin hoping for relief from brutal winters—only to run out of money with hundreds of miles still to go. Stranded and desperate, they enter a world of labor camps, endless fieldwork, hunger, and exhaustion, where families are worked hard, paid little, and treated as disposable. Once respected and secure, they find themselves suddenly labeled vagrants. Pride becomes a liability. Dignity must be defended daily. And survival depends on grit, faith, and refusing to give up—especially for Hazel, who will not all...

  This week editor's choice:   Blest Atheist by Elizabeth Mahlou Book Description: As a young child, outraged by the hypocrisy she finds in a church that does nothing to alleviate the physical and sexual abuse she experiences on a regular basis, Beth delivers an accusatory youth sermon and gets her family expelled from the church. Having locked the door on God, Beth goes on to raise a family of seven children, learn 17 languages, and enjoy a career that takes her to NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. All the time, however, God keeps knocking at the door, protecting and blessing her, which she realizes only decades later. Ultimately, Beth finds God in a very simple yet most unusual way. A very human story, Blest Atheist encompasses the greatest literary themes of all time – alienation, redemption, and even the miraculous. The author’s life experiences, both tragic and tremendous, result in a spiritual journey containing significant ups and downs that ultimately yield gr...