Trail of the Lonesome Pine

The Kentucky mountains keep their own counsel. For thirty years, the Tollivers and Falins have killed each other over stolen timber and old wrongs, their hatred running deeper than the roots of the lonesome pine. Then John Hale rides in from the outside world - a "furriner" with coal contracts in his saddlebags and honest eyes that give nothing away. He's come to dig wealth from the earth, not trouble. But he hasn't counted on June Tolliver. June has never wanted to leave these hills. She's the mountain's daughter, fierce as a winter storm and bound to her people by blood and memory. But when Hale looks at her, she feels something more dangerous than any bullet the Falins might send her way. Their love is the one thing the mountains cannot forgive - a betrayal of blood, of history, of everything her family has died for. Fox captures Appalachia at the precise moment before it vanishes forever. Coal is coming, and with it the outside world that will bury the old ways. This is both a passionate romance and an elegy for a world about to be torn apart by progress. For readers who crave love stories with real stakes, where the heart's desire might literally get you killed.