Viola Rawls Erickson, a sharecropper’s daughter, grew up in Texas, chopping and picking cotton from the age of ten. Ignoring the hot sun, she composed poetry as she worked, rushing home later to record the words before they were forgotten. There was no dictionary in the Rawls home, so at school Viola spent recess perusing the dictionary in the library. Completion of her book The Ones We Love is the realization of a dream. A widow since age 37, she is now 83, and the mother of four sons and a daughter. She lives near Rexburg, Idaho.