The Green Bough

In 1913, the year after the Titanic sank and Oregon women got the vote, Gladys Humphrey, daughter of a Portland, Oregon physician, was hired to teach nine children in a one-room schoolhouse at a loggers' camp in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. But as a city girl and fresh out of school herself, she found this experience to be much more than she had bargained for.First, there was the farm woman with whom she lived, who insisted she clean her room and churn butter in addition to paying for her room and board. Then there was the school clerk who considered her incompetent; the two children, notorious for getting into trouble, who liked to play with dynamite; and a farm hand who attacked her after a New Year's Eve party. Add to that a mysterious "witch" who often hid in the woods and scared everyone, and Gladys found herself putting every ounce of her ingenuity to work.It was a year of challenges but Gladys met them with pluck, independence and humor, qualities that shaped her performance and reputation even in the big city schools at which she taught later in her career.