"A tale that shows how many ways love can hurt and can heal." -Dr. Jean Haskell, professor of Appalachian studies, co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Appalachia

In 1910 rural Virginia, guns and homemade liquor were readily available. Good citizens turned a blind eye and a sheriff rarely interfered. Married women were at the mercy of a husband and his family.

Ella, a young woman with two small children, is trapped in an abusive marriage to Red Hutchinson, with no way out. At the time, no woman had a way out under those circumstances, but she didn't know that. When calamity befalls her daughter, Ella makes the most heart wrenching decision a woman can face.

Sommers McCloud, an unsophisticated nineteen-year-old believes he can produce a new fabric of beauty and artistry vastly different from the endless white cotton woven in his father's textile mill. He needs help and secretly hires Ella, a decision that tears apart a family and complicates both their lives. A first love is an intense emotion and hardest to relinquish.

Rural Appalachia has intrigued authors and readers with romanticized versions of the region and its people for more than 100 years, often ignoring the reality of men and women struggling to make a living and a life in a hard land of steep mountains, dense forests, and great beauty.