Summer 1936, Wilkes County, North Carolina during the great depression. The Flagg family resides in the middle of the Appalachia - one of the hardest hit areas in the country. As the depression drags on the Flagg family watch their molasses business decimated. Jedediah, the family patriarch and his sons Morgan and Ezra struggle to produce a few meager gallons a week. That is until their sister Ava arrives home and takes control of the family business and starts running moonshine. Ava bails out ex-con Bobby Barlow and tells him he is working for the Flagg family now. With threats mounting from rival clans and the local cops breathing down Bobby's neck, he and Ava devise a plan to play them all, one against the other. They don't necessarily do it by legal means but that doesn't bother them. To live outside the law, you must be honest.
As summer dies, the first boy is found in a shallow grave. More will follow. His hometown has a serial child killer in its midst.... At seventeen, John Ray has silently survived years of molestation at the hands of a respected coach and mentor. When younger boys start disappearing, found sexually abused and murdered in the same woods where he was once victimized, John must confront not only his own past but an interwoven set of characters, some evil, some desperate and some both, who share his memories in one way or another. What John must do, who he must open up to, and the corpses he must unearth-- literally and figuratively in order to stop the madness around him-- is what drives this intense story to its heart-pounding conclusion. In addition to its pace and rich character development, Copperhead Road features an eerie and remarkable sense of place; its setting is the Northern Virginia suburbs of the mid-1980s, pre-cell phone, and pre-Internet, and will carry any reader back to a simpler but sometimes darker recent past. Please don't forget to check the "Look Inside" feature for more detail as well. Author's note: I am a former special victims prosecutor and myself a victim of chronic child sexual abuse. There are touches of my personal story in this book, but more an amalgamation of the thousands of stories I came face to face with while prosecuting and eventually consulting on child abuse cases worldwide. I remain in awe of every child who had the courage to work with my teams on the investigation and prosecution of the horror they endured. This book was written for all of them. And for every boy and girl still silent, helpless, and alone.
"Along the way we see the growth of Earle's political consciousness and his courage in tackling thorny topics such as "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh (in the song "John Walker's Blues"), his opposition to the death penalty, and his recent appearance in support of Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan. Author David McGee also examines the early '70s east Texas singer-songwriter scene - where Earle met his future mentors Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt - and the rise of the New Traditionalist and Americana movements.".
This illustrated A-Z guide covers more than 700 country music artists, groups, and bands. Articles also cover specific genres within country music as well as instruments used. Written in a lively, engaging style, the entries not only outline the careers of country music's greatest artists, they provide an understanding of the artist's importance or failings, and a feeling for his or her style. Select discographies are provided at the end of each entry, while a bibliography and indexes by instrument, musical style, genre, and song title round out the work. For a full list of entries, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Country Music: A Biographical Dictionary website.
The greatest albums of all time . . . and how they happened. Organised chronologically and spanning seven decades, The MOJO Collection presents an authoritative and engaging guide to the history of the pop album via hundreds of long-playing masterpieces, from the much-loved to the little known. From The Beatles to The Verve, from Duke Ellington to King Tubby and from Peggy Lee to Sly Stone, hundreds of albums are covered in detail with chart histories, full track and personnel listings and further listening suggestions. There's also exhaustive coverage of the soundtrack and hit collections that every home should have. Like all collections, there are records you listen to constantly, albums you've forgotten, albums you hardly play, albums you love guiltily and albums you thought you were alone in treasuring, proving The MOJO Collection to be an essential purchase for those who love and live music.
An anecdotal, rollicking tour through America's most colorful region. From the Tidewater through Appalachia, down the Blue Ridge country and into the sunbelt, B.C. Hall and C.T. Wood take us through the American South, inviting us to listen to its music -- blues, country, gospel, and rock -- and to the voices that have shaped its extraordinary, distinctive literature. Interweaving interviews with people both ordinary and famous with thought-provoking reflections on Southern life, history, politics, humor, religion, and cultural icons, The South is a matchless, impressionistic portrait of a people and a place.
Coiled beneath discarded trash or rocky slabs, basking along river edges, and tucked into rock cuts beside the highway, reptiles and amphibians constantly surround us. While many people go out of their way to avoid snakes or shudder at the thought of touching a toad, herpers take to the field armed with cameras, hooks, and notebooks hoping to come across a horned lizard, green tree frog, or even a diamondback rattlesnake. In Herping Texas: The Quest for Reptiles and Amphibians, Michael Smith and Clint King, expert naturalists and field herpers, take readers on their adventures across the state as they search for favorite herps and rare finds. Organized by ecoregion, Herping Texas describes some of the state’s most spectacular natural places, from Big Bend to the Big Thicket. Each chapter contains photographs of the various snakes, lizards, toads, and turtles Smith and King have encountered on their trips. Part nature travel writing and part guide to field herping, Herping Texas also includes a section on getting started, where the authors give readers necessary background on best field herping practices. A glossary defines herping lingo and scientific terms for newcomers, and an appendix lists threatened and endangered species at the state and federal level. Herping Texas promotes experiencing natural places and wildlife equipped with solid information and a responsible conservation ethic. Throughout their decades tracking herps, Smith and King have collected humorous anecdotes and fascinating facts about reptiles and amphibians. By sharing those, they hope to dispel some of the stigma and false ideas people have about these misunderstood animals.
Log Home Design is the preferred, trusted partner with readers in simplifying the process of becoming a log home owner. With its exclusive focus on planning and design, the magazine's friendly tone, practical content and targeted advertising provide the essential tools consumers need – from the crucial preliminary stages through the finishing touches of their dream log home.
A lone wolf biker is faced with an impossible dilemma when he witnesses the murder of a local, prominent political figure by a pair of assassins he knows are bikers. These cold, ruthless, serial killers are bikers that even one-percenters shun. John Trotter, aka Wolf, is an experienced, daily rider torn between his love of family, friends, and the freedom of the road. The biker code he lives by is challenged by his conscience to do the right thing. He calls on his biker brothers for assistance as other bikers start to die in mysterious accidents. The intensity is turned up when Wolf is forced on a long ride to hell and back. The characters, scenes, routes, and rallies are based on actual bikers, places, and events that took place when the author rode the story, minus the murders. The story was guided by coincidence, karma, and totems to the scenes described. Biker humor, chases, crashes, and tips are woven into the story. The characters are believable, everyday bikers from all walks of life, unlike the image frequently portrayed to the public. The journey Wolf and his biker brothers take is enriched by rides to rallies and locations across the southeastern U.S. taking routes frequented by bikers. The book can be used as a guide for rides to fully experience the story while exploring the area. Bikers and non-bikers alike will gain understanding of the call of freedom and its relationship to the motorcycle culture.
At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, “. . . they looked hard—tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin.” When Roberts’s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers’ offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, “Who are these people?” The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts’s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
