Dresses Dreams and Beadwood Leaves Author:Julia Taylor Ebel Rosa May wears dresses made from feedsacks, but her earthy knowledge of roots and herbs gives her hope of owning a store-bought dress and feeds her dream of wearing nurses white. Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves sets a girls journey to mold her own self esteem within the cultural history of the North Carolina mountains in the late 1940s.