Listening to comments made by customers while selling books, I have discovered that this is the ONLY book I've ever sold which is spoken of by different people as having three recognized protagonists! The husband for some; the wife for others, and the daughter for other readers. What an accomplishment. But, of course, Harriette Arnow was one of our region's finest authors. Although she is best know for The Dollmaker, set in Detroit during World War II, featuring newcomers from the Kentucky mountains, many prefer this book set entirely in the Kentucky mountains where Arnow was born, raised, taught in a one-room school, and homesteaded before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her first book, Mountain Path (1934) was inspired by the time she spent in a community not yet served by a road. This, her second book (1949) was set in a community served by a gravel road, and that was her working title. The Dollmaker she first titled, The Main Highway to reflect that experience of mountain people - before her publishers changed it. Arnow was a direct descendant of Bonnie Kate Sherrill, the wife of Tennessee's first governor, John Sevier.
New York, book club edition, 1949. 412 pages with a community map on each of the end papers.