"A Candle Within Her Soul" tells a long, sad story about the Melva tornado. Stripped to the bare facts about the Box family: Heavy rains on the night of March 11, and rain and hail during the morning. Anna Box, Billy's wife, and the mother of Budgie, five, and two girls, eleven and eight, decided to visit her sister-in-law, Florence Box, wife of Ranzy. Florence lived with her four small children right on the creek bank (Turkey Creek) across the street from the boxcar station. Both women were pregnant. Most of these children would have been in school that day, but the swollen creek prevented the school teacher, Jean Layton, from getting to town. The school was never touched by the tornado. At the time the tornado hit, the Box children and two of the Mahnkey boys were throwing sticks and rocks into the creek. They headed for the Box house, but shortly after they got inside, the house was hit, turned on its side, and flew into the creek before disintegrating. All seven of the Box children and Bill Mahnkey were drowned. Most of them had been trapped under fallen trees or debris from the house. The Box women were both injured, Florence, and her baby was stillborn that night. The book does not say what happened to the Box parents, or if the had other children later. The children were all buried in Branson, in two wide graves. This, by the way, is an INCREDIBLE book. Ellen Gray Massey is the English teacher from Lebanon who started Bittersweet Magazine back in the late 70's or early 80's. The book is the biography of Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, mother of Douglas Mahnkey and a poet who I find very similar to Emily Dickenson. She was also one of those county correspondents for the Forsyth newspaper, and a woman who was really clear on the essentials of life. I would recommend this book very highly to all of you. This must have been a very sad time in Taney County. The countryside had just recovered from the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, which my grandmother remembers as several months of not being allowed to go anywhere, and news of new deaths in the area every day. Ingrid