"Why did Pa have to die?" What Pa was involved in had been handed down from generation to generation. The Hill's and the Evans' had fought over land and squabbled over money for years - taking each other to court, putting up unseen boundaries on land to keep each other out. Mary Hill didn't understand everything about the feud. She knew that Uncle Jesse was shot and killed two years ago, but was really too young to grasp what had happened. So young, and so familiar with sorrow, Mary struggles to keep her family together in the midst of a bitter and violent feud. Just fifteen years old, she is thrust into the role of mother to her twelve siblings, fearful that, with the coming of each new day, a new tragedy will strike. By escaping Garrard County, Mary may be able to save her family from further bloodshed, but can she get them all out in time?

The Hatfield-McCoy feud, the entertaining subject of comic strips, popular songs, movies, and television, has long been a part of American folklore and legend. Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization. Waller argues that the legendary feud was not an outgrowth of an inherently violent mountain culture but rather one manifestation of a contest for social and economic control between local people and outside industrial capitalists -- the Hatfields were defending community autonomy while the McCoys were allied with the forces of industrial capitalism. Profiling the colorful feudists "Devil Anse" Hatfield, "Old Ranel" McCoy, "Bad" Frank Phillips, and the ill-fated lovers Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield, Waller illustrates how Appalachians both shaped and responded to the new economic and social order.

Includes section: "Some Michigan books."

The Johnson & Sims families were pioneer ranchers, settling in the same region--Lampasas & Burnet counties--in the dangerous years before the Civil War. After the War, Billy & Nannie Johnson & Dave & Laura Sims establish large ranches in adjoining counties in West Texas. At the turn of the century the two families united in a marriage of 14-year-old Gladys Johnson & 21-year-old Ed Sims. Several years later a nasty divorce ensued due in part to Gladys willfulness & Ed's drinking. More trouble followed over custody of their two children & Gladys took matters into her own hands.....