A Canton bookstore that's ventured into publishing has expanded its catalog with another local book.

Erlee Worley of Canton's tales from her childhood during the Depression, "We Made It" and "Rounding the Corners," have been compiled into one volume and re-released by Yawn's Publishing.

The store, Yawn's Books & More on East Main Street in downtown Canton, will host a reception and book signing for "We Made It!: On the Farm During The Depression" at 2 p.m. on Saturday. The book sells for $19.95; admission to the event is free.

Farris Yawn, owner of Yawn's, said Ms. Worley's stories are valuable because they offer a glimpse of how people lived in Georgia during the Depression.

"It shows how people got along in severe economic times, which is relevant today," he said.

The first book, "We Made It," was published in the early 1990s and is a collection of more than 40 stories from her youth. She wrote the second book a few years later after readers asked for more tales.

"People said, 'You didn't write anything about so and so' and 'You didn't mention so and so,'" she said.

Ms. Worley, 86, would recount her childhood stories to her granddaughter, which eventually led to her decision to write the episodes down.

"I could write better than I could talk," she said, adding she has known she could be writer since attending Reinhardt College in Waleska for two years in the mid-1940s. A teacher there, she said, would read her work aloud to the class.

"She was a teacher. If she liked it, maybe I could hatch up some stories," she said.

The book's stories are about the "trials and tribulations" of everyday life during that era.

Ms. Worley was one of 12 children. Her father owned a country store and the family raised cotton in a tiny community called Enterprise.

Stories include "Saving the Chewing Gum," where she recalls the luxury of chewing gum and how children would take gum out of their mouths only for meals. Gum would stay in a child's mouth unless it dropped out somehow and got "too much dirt to be cleaned off."

She also writes about milking cows, going to square dances and homespun fun and games.

"Our parents couldn't afford to buy us toys," she said.

So children created their own games, such as collecting rocks from the yard to play jack stones, using string to form different shapes with their hands and spinning a button on a piece of thread.

"We would play it for hours. Mother would get us to play it because it was quiet," she said.

She said children were not aware of the economic conditions.

"Everyone was just alike. Everybody had the same nothing," she said. "We made it just as good as anybody else."

Ms. Worley, who is widowed, has three children and two grandchildren and attends Canton First Methodist Church.

She said she is excited to see the stories reprinted so more people in the community can share in them.

"It is history," she said about her stories. "True, everyday, living history."