2001 A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
This was a nice feel-good novel about a girl from Chicago doing to stay with her grandmother for a year while her parents regain some ground during the Depression era. Grandma Dowdel lives in a "hick town" in southern Illinois. Grandma is quite a character and gets up to all sorts, never allowing herself to be taken for a fool. She is a tough woman who seems to take advantage of situations and turn them around to suit her own personal needs. At the end of the year when it is time to go back to her parents, Mary Alice wants to stay with Grandma.  She has come to know how compassionate her grandmother really is during a tornado.
This endearing story put me in mind of stories I heard as a child about my great-great-grandmother Kate White. She lived on Prince Edward Island outlived two husbands and raised over 20 children. My grandfather's parents died in the 1918 Flu epidemic and she was left to raise her daughter's 5 children. My grandfather said she was as strong as an ox and no one got in her way. She could hoist a barrel of flour on her knee and load it onto the wagon while the mill's workers looked on in amazement. Both these grandmothers had to be tough to survive the lives they led.