Who Was the Lady in the Coffin: Early History of Helena

In the 1950s, in the Mississippi River town of Helena, Arkansas, young children unearthed an old coffin on their playground with a perfectly embalmed lady inside. The coffin was hermetically sealed with a glass cover, revealing the woman's face. The children had no idea their playground had been a cemetery 150 years earlier. They knew that the Civil War Battle of Helena had taken place almost 100 years earlier but did not know that the grave markers were destroyed, leaving unidentified bodies behind.

The author describes the birth of this Delta town and details his years-long search for the lady's identity. Carrying this childhood memory for most of his life, now in his eighties, he has decided to tell his story. Looking back on his early years of seeing his first dead body, he has set out to reveal the identity of the person unearthed and unknown, buried on his playground.