When author Rita Williams' parents settled in Strawberry Park, near Steamboat Springs, during the early 1930s, hers was the only black family for 200 miles. At the age of 4, after her mother died, Rita went to live with her eccentric and embittered Aunt Daisy, who was both tender and abusive. In her recent memoir If the Creek Don't Rise: My Life Out West with the Last Black Widow of the Civil War, Williams describes a hardscrabble life, but one surrounded by natural beauty. Ryan Williams spoke with Williams in June, when the book was first published. The conversation is part of our look back this week at some of the authors we've interviewed in 2006.
