Daughter of the White River

It’s 1931. Chaos erupts in a small courtroom in DeWitt, Arkansas as a young woman, dressed in all red, slowly lowers a pearl-gripped pistol. 17-year-old Helen Spence just shot Jack Worls as he stood trial for her father’s murder. “He killed my daddy,” she utters. She shot to kill, and Worls is dead. Daughter of the White River is a Southern True Crime Documentary based on Arkansas folk hero, Helen Spence. Born in 1912, Helen was “river-smart”. She could catch fish, skin deer, and sew dress hems. She could also kill men. In Depression-Era Arkansas, River People lived free in floating communities of houseboats. Houseboat girl Helen Spence avenged her father's death and became a teenage folk hero. The project has produced the first all-Arkansas made film that confronts the marginalized history of the Delta's River People. In folk hero Helen Spence, we discover the original real-life True Grit Girl upon whom the fictional character Mattie Ross was based.