In this fine Appalachian novel, Larry Smith chronicles four generations of McCalls, their joys and sorrows, their sins and their nobility�.Such regional fiction has always been about people: their connections with one another, their home place, their struggles to survive and to prosper. It�s all here, set, in the grand tradition of Wendell Berry and Conrad Richter, against the Ohio landscape: its hills and its rivers, its frontier beginnings and its later industrial development. We care about the place and its people. Finishing the novel, we understand ourselves and our nation with a deeper knowledge. -Annabel Thomas, author of Stone Man Mountain
