Olive Ann Burns was born in 1924 and grew up in Banks County, a rural area of Georgia. She attended school in the nearby town of Commerce, which served as the model for the fictional town of Cold Sassy. When she was a child, Burns's father told her stories about his childhood in Georgia and specifically recounted the story of his grandfather, who, after his wife died, married a much younger woman. These characters served as the models for Grandpa Blakeslee and Miss Love Simpson in Cold Sassy Tree. In real life, their union caused an uproar in the small Southern town at a time when traditional notions of proper behavior bumped up against societal changes.
The Progressive Era. The election of Teddy Roosevelt as U.S. president in 1900 marked the beginning of a period known as the Progressive Era, which lasted until the United States entered World War I in 1917. The Progressive Era started as a response to the panic of the 1890s, an economic depression in which many people lost their jobs and both urban and rural living conditions deteriorated.
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